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STUDIES IN STANZAS 



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BY 



ORPHEUS C. KERR 



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fWA^ 15 1882 I 



NEW YORK 

The Useful Knowledge Publishing Company 

No. i8 Vesey Street 
1882 






Copyright 1882 by R. H. Newell 



S W Green's Son 

Printer Elecirotyper and Binder 

74 Beekman Street 

New York 



CONTENTS. 



TINTS OF THE TIMES. PAGE. 

The Imperial Votaress 7 

Family Reading 13 

" SiMILIA SiMILIBUS CURANTUR." l6 

Fiat Justitia 23 

Grant 26 

OWGOOST AND MaHREE 33 

Watts in a Panic 36 

Play of the Period , 38 

Recognition 41 

Reconstructed 45 

That Awful Dad 50 

Watch C^sarism 54 

Sumner 58 

No Santa Claus 61 

A Cup to Christmas 66 

Fraud by Heaven ... 69 

At the Springs 71 

The Broken Racer 74 

Just the Trouble 77 

The Man they Hang 81 

Certain Verses 83 

The Riven Aerostat 86 

" Puts " AND " Calls " 91 

At Easter 94 

The Mute 96 

Hygeia in the South 99 

The Triumph loi 

Vox Dei 106 

(3) 



4 Contents, 

The Nine io8 

Pro Patria Mori no 

The "Last" Man 112 

Epithalamium n5 

Brother Blathers 117 

In Lent 122 

The Dead Napoleon 124 

Humor's Iliad 127 

The Jester's Burial 130 

BALLADS AND BROADSIDES. 

A Fable op Finance 137 

Condensed Tragedies 144 

The Common Lot 146 

The Comic Christian Clergyman 148 

Balloon Ballads 154 

Balloon Him of tlie Republic ,.... 154 

Mose 155 

Laus Thetis 158 

Infatuosity 159 

The Sainted Damosel. ♦.... 160 

Undekwriteousness 163 

The Boston Man 170 

Chicken and Eggs are Out 173 

The Truckee Regatta 181 

Billiards 184 

A Stoop to Conquer 186 

The Polished Legal Gentleman 191 

Squibs for " the Fourth " 199 

The Third Termagant .... 202 

The Sleighing op Old 209 

Beauty and Booty 214 



TINTS OF THE TIMES. 



(5) 



STUDIES IN STANZAS. 



THE IMPERIAL VOTARESS. 

When Coelia, tireless in her urgent mission, 
On quiet Mrs. Domus made a call, 

From what she viewed as woman's false posi- 
tion 
Was drawn her plea for aid to Women all. 

A lonely spinster, with a future cheerless 
As were the loveless years she'd left behind. 

Her heart, unmated, from neglect was fearless 
To crave for more than Love for womankind. 

No weak disciple she, to dream and linger, 
Because with doubting others might be dumb ; 

But hers to cry, erect, with beck'ning finger : 
I lead the way, my Sisters ! — will you come ? 

(7) 



8 Studies in Stanzas. 

• The kindly matron of the modest dwelUng, 
Serene in simple comfort and content, 
vShe saw as one her higher nature quelling- 
'Neath Wrongs which, comprehended, she'd 
resent. 

And, paling, flushing with the bold excitement 
Of Teaching that as Truth which was un- 
sought, 
She hastened onward in her fierce indictment 
Of those the Truth who helped not as the}^ 
ought. 

" I seek you, Madame," was her grim petition, 
" To ask for our Memorial your name, 

As that of one whose Sex's recognition 
The less than other's Equal, is its shame ! 

'•'■ The idle, empty, listless dolls of fashion, 
The vain, bedizened puppets of the ball, 

The slaves of what mankind exalt as Passion, 
May kiss the golden fetters of their thrall ; 

" But you, a woman, bred of higher feehng. 
And conscious of a soul immortal, too. 

Were never born to spend a life in kneeling, 
If Man lifts not to equal stature, You! 



The Imperial Votaress. 9 

'' Let puling Love for love sick children answer, 
And servile household duties for the drudge ; 

Not Man's time-serving poet and romancer, 
But Woman's self, was made for Woman's 
judge. 

" No longer waiting on our master's pleasure, 
To take the power he gives to us, or pelf, 

We claim the Right our own rewards to measure, 
And e'en to cast the Ballot with himself !" 

The Matron, heeding all that had been spoken, 
From quiet meditation raised her head ; 

One moment kept the silence soft unbroken, 
And then, with look and smile peculiar, said : 

" If painful seemeth my complete refusing 
Your Suffrage Right Memorial to sign, 

Take consolation from my bolder choosing 
A far more daring method and design. 

"■ While you are asking for the poor concession 
Of right to vote with Men, the same as they, 

'Tis left for me, by slow and sure progression, 
To cast Two precious ballots in a day !" 



lo St tidies in Stanzas. 

As Coelia, frowning, stood aloof and rigid, 
To hear her cause and caUing made a jest, 

One gentle look she caught — and was less frigid. 
And something mutely-tender stirred her 
breast. 

A hand inviting mildly came to meet her, 
And, ere she could resist it, she was led 

To where the vision, fairy-like, to greet her 
Was e'en a tiny morsel of a bed. 

With silent touches dainty curtains lifted, 
As though their fleecy folding held a noise, 

She saw, beyond the snowy portal rifted. 
In loving clasp asleep, Twin Baby-boys. 

And, smiling fondly, spoke the happy mother: 
" In these, the Rights that Nature makes my 
own, 

I live and rule the peer of Man, my brother. 
From humblest thatch of shelter, to the throne ! 

" He, kneeling knightly, in a love the purest. 
Was vassal to the Kingdom these should bring ; 

Without them I were poorer than the poorest. 
And with them I am richer than a King ! 



The Imperial Votaress. 1 1 

" To Husband, Children, I as Woman loyal, 
Resign my own dominion of my life, 

And they return it doubly told, and royal, 
In higher reign of Mother and of Wife. 

" By fearless battle with the Right's offender. 
These Boys of ours their father's own shall 
seem ; 

By manly strength to man and woman tender. 
In gentler likeness I shall be supreme. 

'•' The Natures mingling in a blest Communion, 
Ere yet their lives, its glory, were begun, 

Shall dwell together in their brother union, 
To blend their parents, Equal, into One. 

'' If, growing grandly unto manhood's station, 
Their father's spotless honors theirs should be. 

From all that makes them noble to the nation. 
Shall come a crown of glory unto Me. 

'' And when, the freeman's sov'reign moment 
reaching. 

Their Votes to purpose worthy they consign, 
By all that holds them true to Mother-teaching, 

The Ballots they deposit shall be Mine !" 



12 Studies in Stanzas 

Thus speaking, softly, and with fervent feehng, 
Her eyes upon her darhngs in their bed, 

She saw not where the other forth was steaUng, 
With downcast eyeUds, too, and drooping head. 

Oh, spirit fairer, and of subtler reason ! 

Oh, Woman, first in Man's supremest grace ! 
His rule is but his loyalty or treason, 

To yours beside the cradle of our race. 



Family Reading, 13 



FAMILY READING. 

An American male parent, unto his babes said he : 
*' Come hither, pretty httle ones, and sit on either 

knee. 
And tell me what you've lately heard your mother 

read, and me?" 

In his fatherly assurance, and fond, parental way, 
He wanted to discover what the innocents would 

say 
About the Missionary-book they'd heard the 

other day. 

Full of glee spake young- Alonzo, all legs and 

curly hair, 
" You yead about the man they hung, and all the 

people there ; 
And mamma yead the funny part, of how it made 

him swear." 



14 Studies in Stanzas. 

Joining quickly in, cried Minnie — all waist and 

dimpled neck : 
" It wasn't half so funny, though, as that about 

the check 
They caught somebody forging, 'cause he was so 

green, I 'speck." 

" But the thing I liked the bestest," Alonzo piped 

amain, 
" Was how somebody yunned away, and won't 

come back again, 
And tookt somebody's wife with him upon a yail 

yoad train." 

" Then you wasn't list'ning, 'Lonzo," came swift 

from Minnie, sm'all, 
" When papa read about the girl that tookt her 

only shawl, 
And wrapt a baby up in it, and left it in a hall." 

*' Oh, I wa'n't, hey ? " trilled Alonzo, dismayed to 

be outdone ; 
" I'm go'n' to learn to yead, myself; and you can 

have the Sun ; 
And I'll yead Herald ' Personals,' and never tell 

you one ! " 



Family Reading. 15 

The American male parent, his hair arose on end ; 
On either knee an infant form he did reverse and 

bend, 
And from their little mouths straightway made 

dismal sounds ascend. 



1 6 Studies in Stanzas, 



"SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR." 

Miss Dora Delaine, of West Livingston place — 
A rose in her bloom and a lily in grace — 
Fell sick, in an hour, of what none could define, 
But wiseacres called going into decline. 

It happened this way : on the night of the ball 
To Russia's Grand Duke, young Alexis the tall, 
While Music and Mirth, fairy twins as they are, 
Were paying their court to the son of the Czar, 
And lights sparkling endless, and jewels and 

flow'rs 
Lent luster and hue to the wings of the hours. 
Ere yet her proud eyes lost the fire of their 

glance. 
Our Dora turned faint in a pause of the dance. 

The heat, or the crowd, or excitement, 'twas said. 
Thus made in a moment her cheeks like the dead ; 



Similia Stmt It bus Curantur. 17 

And ices, and essences pungent, and fans 
Were proffered, and fluttered ; and various plans 
Were hinted for gaining more air ; but she sighed 
The single word " Home ! " and would not be 
denied. 

Papa and mamma, when the carriage was called. 
Bore homeward poor Dora, all muffled and 

shawled ; 
And not from that night was she ever the same 
Bright spirit of health ; but as languid and tame 
And dull as a bird that refuses to sing, 
And droops in his cage with his head in his wing. 

At first it was thought the affection was slight. 
Some freak of a chill, or of lacing too tight ; 
But when to her face there returned not its 

bloom. 
And listless and pale she remained in her room, 
The family doctor was summoned to see 
Whatever the matter could possibly be. 

To humor her mood — which was rather ill- 
bred — 
He came as her friend, not physician, he said ; 



1 8 Studies in Stanzas. 

And, having first talked of the weather and news, 
Remarked, that he feared Miss Delaine had " the 

blues," 
And hoped, for the sake of herself and her 

friends, 
She'd take a prescription of tincture which 

tends 
To fuse with its iron the blood, and give tone — 
" O, pshaw ! " exclaimed Dora, " do leave me 

alone ! 
I hate your old drugs ! " and the pointed rebuff 
Offended the doctor, who left in a huff. 

Two other practitioners, stately and grave, 
Appeared in their turns and their evidence gave : 
" Digestive inertia," said one ; " and for you 
Some acid sulphuric, diluted, will do." 
" It's nervous-pulmonic," the other observed ; 
'' Take Jink's Hypo-phosphates, and don't be un- 
nerved." 
" I'm well ! " Dora cried, in hysteric revulse — 
" I wont show my tongue, and you sha'fit feel 
my pulse ! " 



Similia Similibus Cicra7itur. 19 

Her father perplexed, between anger and pain, 
Bethought him at last of young Doctor Mi- 
graine, — 
Who came from the South, when the fighting 

was done. 
To practice in Gotham, where fortunes are won, — 
And, calling him in, laid a hand on his knee. 
And said : " You will find, sir, my daughter to be 
Convinced she is well, 'spite of all you can say ; 
Yet dwindling and peaking and pining away." 

" I've heard of the case, and have seen Miss De- 
laine, 
And went to the ball," answered Doctor Migraine; 
Nor spoke any more till he entered the room 
Where Dora was drooping in silence and gloom. 

** A doctor, again ! " was her sigh of despair — 
" Oh, when will it end ? " He selected a chair, 
And, seating himself with his face to her own, 
Replied : *' You can tell that yourself, and alone ! 
My words shall be few, and as plain as my art ; 
You're sick. Miss Delaine, with disease of the 
heart." 



20 Studies in Stanzas. 

'Twas rather the tone than the language that 

made 
Miss Dora breathe quick, as she said, half afraid, 
" Why, what can you mean ? " He v. as swift to 

reply, 
" That night, at the ball, very near you was I.'* 

She stared and grew white, and the speaker went 

on : 
" I can't say I saw, but I heard what was done ; 
One moment you beamed — f' But Montgomery Sill 
'S engaged to 'Bel Vaughn ') — in the next you were 

ill I " 

She started to rise, with the tears on her face — 
" Your words are insulting ! " He bowed from 

his place — 
" One moment," he begged, " till I've said what I 

may ; 
Then chide, if you choose, and I'll hasten away. 

" The words I o'erheard with yourself at the ball. 
Are not more for me than for you to recall 
With pride or delight — (if indeed you are still 
Inclined to waste thought on Montgomery 
Sill) ;- 



Similia Similibus Curantur. 21 

For Isabel Vaughn, with a friend of my heart 
Once played such a cruel, perfidious part, 
That now, even now, when his care's at an end, 
I feel, and am spurned, and betrayed with my 
friend ! 

" A guest from the South at the Springs, in a time 
When fortune was his in his own sunny clime. 
He bowed to her charms, nor resisted the spell 
That urged him to woo her, the fair Isabel ! 
His suit was accepted ; they parted, to meet 
No more until war, like a tempest of sleet, 
Had blighted his fortunes, with others, ah me ! 
When Sherman passed through on his March to 

the Sea. 
And then, when he offered release, in his pride, 
To her who had promised her hand as his bride, 
She answered the note with this stab of the pen — 
* 'Twas but a flirtation — 'tis ages since then ! ' 

" And now she is pledged to Montgomery Sill ! 
The friend of my heart, lives he under it still ? 
He does ; and confides to Miss Dora Delaine 
He shares her disease, and his name is Migraine ! " 



22 Studies ill Stanzas. 

You see how it was : they were surely a pair, 
This southron ill used, and the sorrowful fair ; 
And all that remains for a mortal to guess 
This hint from a letter may briefly express : 

" My friends in the South " (wrote the doctor one 

day), 
^' You know I'm an allopath, hot, in my way, 
And that, hitherto, I've belonged to the school 
Esteeming a rival a knave or a fool ; 
But, lately, I've had such a wonderful case, 
That, sooner than lose it, I've dared the disgrace 
Of making the point, beyond questioning, sure. 
That like is for like an infallible cure ! 
My patient, the loveliest queen of a girl 
That ever drew kings in the chain of a curl, 
Was fading away with that exquisite smart 
I'd carried for years in my own weary heart ; 
And after due visits, by no means for pelf, 
For life I've prescribed — wish me joy in't ! — my- 
self!" 



Fiat Justitia, 23 



FIAT JUSTITIA. 

Hand me here my cap and bells, 

Throw the motley o'er me ; 
Then from out the prison cells, 

Drag- the wretch before me ! 
ril, in public virtue's name, 

Bring him to repentance ; 
Make him feel a felon's shame, 

And pronounce his sentence. 



Now, you villain ! look at me, 

Hear my words consistent ; 
Yours the deadly sin we see, 

Lately, too persistent. 
If you weep, 'tis guilt confessed, 

Worse than can be pardoned ; 
If you smile, the fact expressed, 

Is, that you are hardened. 



24 Studies in Stanzas, 

Crime it was that made your crime- 
Say you — but its blackness 

Finds no censure in a time 
R^nk with moral slackness — 

He you slew your all had stole ? — 
Why, you simple noddy ! 

He would only kill a soul ; 
You have killed a body. 

If for that same first offense 

Life itself must answer, 
Who'd be living one hour hence f 

Tell me, if you can, sir ! 
Possibly a saint or two. 

And the baby-creatures ; 
Few besides could 'scape the rue ; 

No, not even preachers. 

Tradesmen trade in weaker souls, 
Lovers pick and buy them, 

Lawyers make them lie in scrolls, 
Judge and jury try them ; 



Fiat Justitia, 25 

Priests prepare them for the flight ' 

Doctors do insure them, 
All combine to seal their plight, 

None to guard and cure them. 

He you slew would kill a soul ?^ — 

Why, you simple noddy ! 
By that rule, upon the whole, 

You'd kill anybody. 
Hanged be you, and then entombed, 

For your wicked capers — 
Tried by whom — you ask — and doomed ? 

By the daily papers ! 



36 Studies in Stanzas, 



GRANT. 

"The King Is dead — long live the King!" they 
clamor, 
When moves a Crown from falling head to high, 
To throw o'er frail humanity a glamour. 
That, raised to Royalty, it cannot die. 

The golden circlet, flaming gems of ages. 

By craven homage held in upper air 
Eternal shines through long historic pages, 

A symboled stamp of godhead deathless there. 

No fable ours, like this, to gild immortal 
The name and ofhce first in peace and strife ; 

They are but men who pass our loftiest portal. 
And perish from it in the midst of life. 

By deeds of honor, duty or demerit. 

They make their crowns, of pure or baser ore, 
To wear what they of their own worth inherit, 

Or sink, all crownless, to be known no more. 



Grant, 27 

To thee, our Soldier-President, returning 

Unto the ranks from seat supreme of sway, 
What meed shall give thy Country as thine earn- 
ing, 
When blinding partisanry fades away ? 

From clouds of War that thine own sword had 
riven ; 

Ere yet thy head above their gloom was clear ; 
While rang for thee, or thee arraigned, to heaven 

Thy troopers* shouting and the widows' tear ; 

The great Republic summoned thee to station 
Made doubly great by thy victorious aid, 

When through the blood-stained highways of the 
Nation 
The long-roll answered to the cannonade. 

By battle's seething thunderbolt ignited, 
Columbia's natal planet earliest burned ; 

*Twas to the sword her virgin love was plighted, 
And to the sword the precious trust returned. 



28 Studies in Stanzas. 

She called in no uncertain tones of heeding, 
That thou should'st bear thy laurels to the 
place 

Where martyr blood of Mercy slain was pleading 
For justice panoplied in sterner grace. 



A loyal Captain, trained to follow orders, 
A man to them obeying as to fate, 

Thy marching answer took thee o'er the borders 
Between the camp-fire and the halls of state. 



A Captain true, unused to Party's scheming, 
Nor deeper versed in wiles to meet its own, 

As in the field for half-lost Fight's redeeming, 
In Faction's feud thou stood'st almost alone. 



What marvel, then, that carping tongues as- 
saulted 
The silent leader, open as the day ; 
That bold Vainglory thought the Chief had 
halted 
When firm he stood, a lion, in its way! 



G7^ant. 29 

Where quailed the will at Donelson the victor ; 

O'er Vicksburg's walls of steel and flame no 
less ; 
Inexorable the Republic's lictor, 

To bear her fasces through the Wilderness? 



In War a bolt with no resounding thunder 
To cry the havoc of its dread release, 

Thy plain, straight way, sententious to our won- 
der, 
A noiseless mastery, prevailed in Peace. 

No word from lips inscrutable of omen, 
For good or evil, answered hatred's plea ; 

For friends thy hand, and for the conquered foe- 
man 
A Brother-Soldier's tacit chivalry. 



And fared the Land the worse for thine endeavor 
To fill with Acts unspoken Duty's part? 

A modest hero she had known thee, ever. 
And for thy motives took thee to her heart. 



30 Studies in Stanzas. 

The placeman's clangor rising to her hearing, 
From thee to tear the State's potential scroll, 

Her voice responsive, mighty and unfearing, 
Again acclaimed thee at the Capitol. 

Not thine the fault that made this added glory 
A prize attained through uncongenial strife, 

With one long living the sublimest story 
To end, ignobly wiled, a noble life. 

Alas ! for him, the Scribe of simple manner, 
In zeal for failing fellow-mortal brave. 

Lured from the grove to bear a periled banner, 
And find beneath its fated folds the grave. 

Not yet the laurel knows the peaceful zero 
To bid the humbler bay above it bloom ; 

Still gives the court its honors to the hero, 
And to the sage derision and a tomb. 

And better thus, despite untold complaining, 
The place for valor is the sov'reign seat, 

There to be swift and mighty in maintaining 
The voice upraised by wisdom in the street. 



Grant, 31 

To each its office, noble by contrasting ; 

A grace of empire shared aUke by each ; 
First in the van the man of action casting 

A shade, as shines, behind, the man of speech. 

So trusted Twice, when Sage and Knave, com- 
bining. 
Had sought thy fall with threat and witless 
jibe. 
And sophist Spleen had brought to thy defining 
The venal newsman's dastard diatribe ; — 



Let finger touch the record's line revealing 
One deed thine honor's conscience should 
atone ; — 
If friends were false, then thine the honest feeling, 
And theirs the sin that made the shame their 
own. 

Thy hand had wrought full many a noble action. 
To hide what simple faith was erring there. 

Had not the fell, ambitious mask of Faction, 
Turned stone before thee in the Senate's chair. 



32 Studies in Stanzas, 

For peace to govern raised supreme o'er others, 
As erst a captain war's behest to fill ; 

Not of thyself a ruler of thy brothers : 
By trust of theirs a captain, only, still ;— 

In their approval mercifully binding 

The wounds an angry, erring brother knew ; 

Something in him to manhood loyal finding. 
That to his own, or right or wrong, was true ;— 

No gain thou had'st of wealth — save for thy 

Nation 

Of Gold to make her pledge and promise good ; 

Thou wentest forth from thankless cares of 

station, 

By thine own friends scarce justly understood. 

But these the glories bringing fame upon thee 
In future years, in clearer majesty : 

The patriot's truth, the soldier's might, that won 
thee 
The heart of Lincoln and the sword of Lee, 



Owgoost and Mahree, 33 



OWGOOST AND MAHREE. 

On Newport sands, at eventide, 
Walked youth and maiden side by side ; 
She wore the latest. 

The latest style of dress ; 
And he — in kids and tall white hat — 
Himself did thus express : 
" Let me fan you ; I'll fan you, my Mahree, 
For scarcely comes a breath of air from off the 
beastly sea." 

The stars, alone, their stroll did note, 
And saw them reach a stranded boat ; 
Soon she was seated, 

Was seated thereupon : 
But not before, unto herself, 
She thought of damage done — 
" O, my panier ! my panier, starched and shirred ; 
To sit upon a hateful boat is perfectly absurd ! " 

He fanned her brow, and sighed, and said : 
" I wonder if your pa's abed ? — 

2 



34 Studies in Stanzas, 

Say ain't it jolly, 

So awful jolly, though, 
To have him think you do not care 
A straw for me, you know ! 
But, how can you, how can you be so deuc'd 
Unmoved at what's so deucid slow for me, your 
own Owgoost?" 

Upon the beach a gaiter neat, 
In pretty petulance did beat ; 

Then she looked upward. 

Looked upward with a^smile, 
A lovely blush, unseen by him, 
Upon her face the while : 
"Now, you man, you! you man, you!" cried 

Mahree ; 
" How utterly ridiculous to say such things to 

me!" 

As thus they cooed upon the shore, 
There came a sudden angry roar: 
It was her father ; 

Her father, the old man, 
Who'd shuffled down from his hotel. 
The figures twain to scan. 



Owgoost and Mahree, 35 

Yes, to scan you, to scan you, loving pair ; 
And of his wrath do you, Mahree, and you, 
Owgoost, beware ! 

" That fellow make return your fan, 
And come with me. Miss Mary Ann I 
Now you, get out, sir ! 

Get out, Augustus Jones ! 
Nor let me hear a word from you, 
If you would save your bones ! 
Have her ? Dang ye ! why dang ye for a fool ! 
You're on a salary, and she goes back to board- 
ing school." 



3^ Shidies in Stanzas. 



WATTS IN A PANIC. 

O ENVY not the poor his pride, 

Though rich in stocks and bank thou art, 
Nor deem the purse with naught inside 

Assureth a contented heart ; 
For ne'er to call a cent thine own 

Is but a mortal still to be, 
And oft a sting of grief is known 

Unto the greatest penury. 



Though in the flaunting pauper's lot, 

No mad'ning railroad shares intrude, 
Although the unmoneyed mind is not 

With wild Trust Companies imbued ; 
Yet " North Pacific " unpossessed 

Can scarce for perfect peace avail, 
And more is needed to be blessed 

Than not to know " Pacific Mail." 



PFa^^s in a Panic, 37 

The ever impecunious soul, 

Without a penny to his name, 
In jeering poverty may roll, 

And make thee wistful for the same, 
While at his spirit's deepest core 

Exists, perchance, a sadder blank 
Than if he owned thy hoarded store, 

And had it in a savings bank. 

Then bear the sorrows of thy wealth 

With manly fortitude and tact ; 
" Northwestern " leaves thee yet thy health, 

And " Western Union " may react. 
More ways to happiness there are 

Than not to be a dollar worth. 
And " Erie " held to wait for par, 

Excelleth beggary from birth. 



38 Studies in Stanzas. 



PLAY OF THE PERIOD. 

The ling-ering, last orchestral swell 

Along- the crowded lobbies drifted, 
When, at the prompter's signal bell. 

The curtain from the stage was lifted ; 
And then, the flutter of applause 

Was not that favorite might be bolstered, 
But murmured through the house because 

So finely was the scene upholstered. 



A glowering husband strode and fumed, 

To think upon his wife unstable. 
While she in pensive beauty bloomed 

Beside a really lovely table ; 
What time a certain young Alphonse, 

Whose flirting caused connubial cholers, 
Stood leaning near a statue bronze. 

Worth, easily, a hundred dollars. 



Play of the Period, 39 

The general story seemed to be 

Of marriage that had been too hasty, 
And ran its round of misery 

'Mongst chairs and sofas rich and tasty ; 
" I love you not ! " the lady said ; 

" And, knowing that, 'tis all you can know ;" 
Then from her husband's pleading fled. 

And fainted near the grand piano. 

From this ensued a meeting grim, 

Between the husband and the lover, 
Within a park of verdure prim, 

Where chaste settees were spread all over. 
A bullet, planted in his face, 

Cut short Alphonse*s life of honey. 
And sprawled him by a marble vase 

That must have cost a mint of money. 

When next appeared the lady fair. 
She was declining with consumption. 

Upon a 'broidered lounge, so rare 
To guess its price would be presumption ; 



40 Studies in Stanzas, 

And when, at last, for love she died, 
With husband, priest and poodle near her, 

The scene was greatly glorified 
By an imported, spacious mirror. 

If such was not the plot exact, 

It seemed the meaning of the bathos, 
And, judged by any sober fact, 

Had equal want of pith and pathos. 
'Twas not in captious spirit rash 

That people grave, when come an end did, 
Pronounced it most immoral trash ; — 

But then the furniture was splendid ! 



Recognition, 41 



RECOGNITION. 

To his Vassal wrote the king : 

When thy City s liegeinen greet me, 
One shall be amongst them there, 
Greatest of the great to meet me. 

Thou mayst know him by his air ; 
See that thou his place prepare ! 

Through the city rang the words, 

By a thousand voices spoken : 
" Loyal in our watch are we 
For the mighty comer's token ; 

We shall know him when we see 
That unto us cometh he." 

Thus, at every trumpet's sound, 

To the gates the people thundered : 
Scanned the prince or priest that came 
With his lordly train, and wondered 
If 'twas he whose lofty fame 
Put the greatest still to shame ? 



42 Studies in Stanzas, 

Rode the viceroys of the land 

From afar into the City, 
With a courtly following, 
Heroes mailed and scholars witty ; 
Each of worth to tilt or sing, 
For a prize before the King. 

" Greatest these of all the Great ! " 

Swelled the peoples' loud hosanna ; 
" Greater mortals there are nought 
In the fane, or under banner. 

Who of them has highest caught 
Honor in our Monarch's thought ? " 

So the quest and question grew, 

In the maze of rival glory ; 
This the one, or that, alone. 
Chief of future song and story ; 

Till the distant highway shone 
With the splendor of the Throne. 

Panoplied in pomp sublime, 

Like the sun, our Monarch nears men ; 
Plain and mountain blaze and shine 

With his chariots and spearsmen. 



Recoo^nition, 43 



^b 



Sound the trump and form the line ; 
Who the Greatest he'll divine ! 

As the sea to kiss the shore, 

Rolled the myriad loyal-hearted 
Through the gates to meet the King, 
Where the hills and valley parted ; 
Praise unto his name to bring, 
That should lift it like a wing. 

He descendeth from his car, 

Where the lords and priests assemble ; 
Lo, the mighty meet his glance. 

In their haughty pride, and tremble ! 
Like the glitter of a lance 
Is the look he turns askance. 

Spake the Vassal in his fear, 

While his heart beat fast and faster : 
" Of my province greatest are 

These, thy slaves, my Lord and Master, 
Whose the noblest natal star, 
Thou hast visioned from afar ! " 



44 Studies in Stanzas. 

From the princes turned the King, 

And, in wave of his example. 
Back recoiled the City's host, 
In a heaving swirl and trample ; 

Beating down a wanderer tossed 
On its violence, and lost. 

Torn and trod by meanest heel, 

Of his own unknown, unknowing ; 
To behold the Greatest, led 
By the people in their going — 

O'er him bowed the King, and said : 
" He is here — and he is dead ! '*, 



1 



Reconstructed, 45 



p 



RECONSTRUCTED. 

I have never seen a Southern woman who had been " recon- 
structed." — yefferson Davis's Speech at White Sttlphur Springs, 
Fa., 1873. 

Into Possumleigh, South Carolina, renowned for 
secession, 
When ended a war that for bitterness chal- 
lenged comparison, 
Marched a federal force, with its colonel, in mar- 
tial progression. 
To camp in the same, for indefinite time, as a 
garrison. 

They were angrily viewed, on their entry, as all 
had expected. 
By those of the place who had suffered from 
battle's calamity ; 
But a woman it was their protection most fierce- 
ly rejected, 
And scorned to the last their commander's pro- 
fession of amity. 



4^ Studies in Stanzas, 

She had solemnly vowed, at the sound of the 
earliest cannon, 
To hate, while she lived, ev'ry Northerner 
bearing a bayonet ; 
And declared, when the rampart of Southland 
no more had a man on, 
She'd mount it herself, and her life as a 
sacrifice lay on it ! 

With a terrible frown of disdain for the people 
around her — 
Who, after a while, took the regiment's com- 
pany graciously— 
And a sentiment still, than before, in its hatred 
profounder, 
She hurled at them all her satirical compli- 
ments spaciously : 

"You may loyally cringe in the dust to your 
merciful masters. 
And Yankees receive in the homes they have 
rendered deplorable. 



Reconstructed, A7 

But a womanly soul rises prouder from honor's 
disasters ; 
No country have I where the foe we have 
fought is adorable ! " 

To some family friends in the North, in a city of 
fashion, 
She fled, as she spoke, from her home and her 
kindred, indignantly ; 
And they heartily gave her a welcome, in spite 
of her passion. 
Nor otherwise took her excusable wrath than 
benignantly. 

• 

In a drapery homespun and sober, she came on 
her visit ; 
A bonnet that seemed of the style of the Plio- 
cene period ; 
And her beautiful hair, having no one to fix or 
to friz it. 
Was gathered as though it belonged to the 
head of a Nereid. 



48 Studies in Stanzas. 

With a wonderful sense of the means that were 
fitted to soften 
A feminine soul in a frenzy of anger political, 
Did her hostesses take her to seamstress and 
milliner often, 
And tempt her to give to the same her atten- 
tion most critical. 

Not a period tedious elapsed e'er she visibly 
brightened, 
And questioned the cost of each dainty and 
sumptuous article ; 
At the old-fashioned things she had on was un- 
speakably frightened, 
And showed of her lately resentful disdain 
not a particle ; — • 

Till it certainly seemed that her anger was 
dying within her, 
As, changing her robes and her bonnet for 
those more Parisian-like, 
It was morally plain that her temper grew 
weaker and thinner. 
And scorn of the North found her lips prone 
to meek indecision-like. 



Reconstructed, 49 

So the marvelous turn in her feehngs went on 
through the season, 
The latest of styles being balm to her bosom's 
avidity ; 
While the enmity cherished so lately, and scoff- 
ing at reason, 
Gave place unto love, with astonishing light- 
ning rapidity. 

And when, finally, home to the Southland her 
wardrobe she carried — 
The silks she had bought, and the bonnet so 
jaunty and blossomly. 
It was, probably, dressed in the same that she 
presently married 
The colonel commanding the garrison at 
Possumleigh. 



50 Studies in Stanzas, 



THAT AWFUL DAD. 

1\W£.—Noon. Scene— ^ gorgeous morning room. 

Enter Exemplary Son, with a bottle of Vichy in one hand, and 
a goblet in the other. 

Son. 

Upon my word, I'm only half awake, 
And so this flashy, trashy stuff must take. 
Oh, my poor head ! it's quite as big again 
As that which I in church reveal to men ; 
And I'm so thirsty !— really this must stop, 
For of wild-oats I've reaped an overcrop. 
Instead of staying out o' nights, begad ! 
I ought, at times, to stay at home with dad, 
Or else, I fear, it's more than ten to one 
He will forget he ever had a son. 

Enter NURSE. 

Well, nurse, how now ! You've doubtless come 

to say 
My father 'd like to bid me a good-day. 



That Awful Dad, 51 

Make some excuse, while I to breakfast get — 
I'm hardly fit, you know, to see him yet. 
He's dressed, of course, and had his breakfast, too, 
And gone his morning walk with Jane and you. 
I hope my orders you see fit to mark, 
That when you wheel him up around the park, 
You let him not with other old men play. 
Unless their nurses are with them to stay. 
If in bad company he chance to fall, 
ril have to blame you, mistress, for it alL 

Nurse. 

Oh, sir, he's mostly just as good as gold ; 
I never saw a better man that old ; 
He scarcely gives a whimper or a pout, 
Though two more teeth of his have just come out. 
But, then, old men must be old men, they say : 
And I surprised him only yesterday. 
At work with heaps of paper and a quill, 
And — would you believe me, sir? — he'd made 
his will ! 

Son. 

His WILL ! oh, horror ! Nurse, can this be so ? 
Go bring him instant hither. Woman, go ! 

{Exit ^DK'Sil^f precipitately . 



52 Studies hi Stanzas, 

Am I awake ? His will ! Well, I declare, 
What next will fashionable fathers dare ! 
My sisters ought to be with him more strict, 
Instead of being thus so derelict ! 
This comes because to whipping they're averse ; 
The old man's left to servants and the nurse ; 
No wonder, then, he does as he may please, 
Makes wills, and chooses his own legatees, 
ril stop it, though, from this hour forth, if I 
Have need the rod, in person, to apply. 

Enter NURSE, wildly agitated. 

Well, nurse, you've brought him, surely, have 
you not ? 

Nurse. 

Oh, sir, if you'll believe the turn I've got 1 
I went to find the dear old creature, straight, 
And he'd slipped out the open airy gate. 
I followed after, quick as I could run, 
And — oh, good lordy ! — what d'you think he'd 
done? 

Son. 

Not gone to sell his bonds, or to dispose 

Of real estate ? — Speak ! speak ! my reason goes ! 



I 



That Awful Dad, 53 

Nurse. 

Much worse than that ! Oh, sir, be calm, I pray, 

Or I can't tell you what I have to say ; — 

The next-door's butler — which his name is Jack — 

Beheld your father jump into a hack 

Beside a lady dressed in silk and fur, 

And — thinks he's run away to marry her ! 

Son {tearing his hair). 

Blue blood and brimstone ! Thunderationment ! ! 
Arouse the house, and let the vale be rent ! 
Cry madness ! murder ! lunacy ! and law ! 
Call out the press, and bid it wag its jaw ! 
A father weds without consent of son ! 
Fm cheated, crushed, deserted, and undone ! 

Knocks down the nurse ; smashes all the furniture; tears out of 
the house; and immediately consults his lawyers as to the feasibil- 
ity of the breakage of wills and the issuance of writs de lunatico 
inquirendo. 



54 Shtdies in Stanzas. 



WATCH C^SARISM. 

Our friend, old Mr. Beat, was dead ; 

We walked behind his bier, 
And softly to each other said : — 
A land its pride, a home its head, 

Lament together here. 

No errors of his own had he. 

Or he himself belied ; 
But faults in others he could see, 
And grief for man's iniquity 

Was that of which he died. 



Beside me, clad in decent black. 

With grave and cleric air, 
There moved a man who sighed '' Alack ! 
What mortal power shall bring him back, 

To comfort my despair ? " 



Watch CcBsa^nsm. ? 5 

" He was my perfect moral twin, 

In wailing virtue's fall : 
And saw the age we're living in 
Is wholly given up to sin, 

And bitterness and gall. 

" Like him I weep to see the day " — 

(He sighed it with a sob), 
" When those we've trusted go astray 
From out the straight and narrow way, 

And justice is a job. 

'' Behold our hapless native land, 

To ruin given o'er ; 
If Credit Mobilier we stand, 
With back-pay clinging to his hand, 

The statesman's pure no more. 

" Thus, ever since the war, has been 

The nation's swift decline ; 
In man nor woman can be seen 
The honor, innocence, I ween, 

Of simpler auld lang syne. 



5 6 Studies in Stanzas. 

" Each day some plundering scheme's begun, 

Since battle flags were furled, 
For earliest issue of the Sun^ 
And Tribune s rather later one, 

And, latest, for the World, 

" The very air is full of crime, 

Corruption stalks abroad ; 
The good old Democratic time 
Held no Ben Butler in its prime, 

Nor any kind of fraud. 

" But, oh ! my friend " — and here he fell 

Upon my neck with groans, 
" Our direst woe is yet to tell — 
Who reads the Herald knows it well, 

And feels it in his bones — 

" The people in their folly tame, 

Will wake at last to rue 
The great republic's crowning shame, 
And Ccesarism is its name ! * * * 

It breaks my heart. * * * Adieu ! " 




Watch CcBsarisin, 57 

He leaves me, in a headlong flight, 

His face of tears a blotch ; 
O, soul of peerless moral height ! 
Why pass thus iieetly from my sight ? — 

Law bless me — where' s my watch / 



58 Studies in Stanzas, 



SUMNER. 

March ii, 1S74. 

He passes silent to his peers 

In that still chamber, dim and vast, 
Where sit, invincible of years, 

The uncrowned monarchs of the past ; 
A grander embassy to know. 

In that far country overhead. 
Than soul inheriteth below 

The white-robed senate of the dead. 

In pageant eloquent of grief, 

A mourning nation at his tomb 
But see a phantom of the chief, 

Through life's last mystery of gloom ; 
Another added unto those. 

For the great battle's shadow born. 
Who feel, unguerdoned by the rose. 

The mortal anguish of the thorn. 



Sumner, 59 

A mighty memory has gone 

From the full volume of the hour, 
The less a majesty passed on 

Than something measureless of pow'r ; 
A spirit missing from the page 

That yet incarnateth the song ; 
A presence parted from the stage, 

Though moves the drama still along. 

The lighted beacon of his soul 

Shone o'er the billows chill and dark, 
When freedom, fainting for a goal. 

In storm and thunder sought the ark ; 
And, paling gently in the ray 

Of peaceful morning from afar, 
Was lost ineffable in day, 

To glow eternal as a star. 

His country, bowing at his grave. 
Can yield a tender thought of grace 

To him, impassionate, who gave 
The blow that sanctified his face ; 



6o Studies in Stanzas, 

But, well remembering the zeal 
Wherewith he bore a bitter part, 

Must yet heroically feel 
The blow that quivers in her heart. 



No Santa Claus, 6i 



NO SANTA CLAUS. 

A CURLY-HEADED trouble-house, 

Scarce higher than a chair, 
With such a look of thoughtfulness 

As children often wear, 
Upturned a chubby face and said, 

Beside his father's knee — 
" If I am good, will Santa Claus 

Bring pretty things to me ? " 



The father, a philosopher. 

And skeptic overmuch ; 
Believing not in anything 

He couldn't see and touch ; 
Concluded that the time had come 

To make his boy as wise, 
And teach him to discredit all 

He saw not with his eyes. 



62 Studies in Stanzas, 

" There is no Santa Claus at all, 

My little man," he said, 
" And they're but false and foolish tales, 

That put him in your head ; 
For, whether Christmas finds you gooi 

Or bad as you can be, 
No toyman down the chimney'll come. 

Nor ever yet did he.'* 

The youngster clasped his tiny hands, 

'' No Santa Claus ! " he cried ; 
And drew away, and caught his breath, 

And not to whimper tried ; 
" No kind old Santa Claus at all, 

To come on Christmas Eve, 
And if a little boy's been good. 

Some drums and things to leave?* 

The philosophic sire explained 

How that was all a myth, 
Which only meant some parent Brown, 

Or White, or Jones, or Smith ; 



No Santa Claus. 63 

And how the fabled children's iriend, 

To punish or delight, 
Was but papa, or mother, here, 

On this and ev'ry night. 

" No Santa Claus ! '* again the child, 

With drooping head, exclaimed. 
And farther still drew back, as though 

Both frightened and ashamed ; 
Then dropped the precious, battered toy,^ 

He'd treasured for a year. 
And frowned, as little children will. 

When they would hide a tear. 

" Now go, be put to bed, my lad, 

'Tis past your hour, you know." 
The boy, impatient, cried " I won't ! " 

And temper such did show, 
That soon the philosophic sire, 

As ne'er before he'd done, 
Chastised into obedience 

His now rebeUious son, 



64 Studies in Stanzas. 

" That you, who've been so good before, 

Should act Uke this," cried he, 
" Is strange enough to make me doubt 

That you the same can be ! " 
To which the little one replied, 

As sullenly he stood : 
" You say there is no Santa Claus, — 

And why should I be good ? " 

At later hour there came a smoke 

From out the nursery door. 
And thither all the household flew, 

From ev'ry startled floor. 
Beside a blazing curtain they 

The little imp did catch — 
" It's cause I have been whipped," said he, 

" I did it with a match ! " 

** He's bad enough to bum us all 

Alive, I do believe ! " 
The father cried, scarce knowing but 

His senses did deceive, 



No Santa Claus, 65 

For which the child, still sullenly, 

This single answer had : 
•* You said there was no Santa Claus — 

Why shouldn't I be bad?" 



66 Studies hi Stanzas. 



A CUP TO CHRISTMAS. 

Merry Christmas is here, with a smile and a 
cheer ; 
Let all your old troubles and quarrels be ended \ 
For the friend that is near brew the punch and 
draw beer, 
And pledge a good wish to the foe who's 
offended. 

Though with him was the spite, 
And with you is the right, 
In bumper to bumper forgive him to-night ; 
For whoever makes plea 'neath the evergreen 

tree, 
A prince of good fellows and welcome is he \ 

In our lot may be loss of the life-gilding dross, 
That rusts, or is bright, in the hold free, or 
grasping ; 
And perchance the green moss on the church- 
yard's pale cross. 
Is wet with our tears for a loved hand's lost 
clasping ; 



A Cup to Chrisbnas. 67 

And the Old Year has said, 
As he bowed his white head : 
Absolve me ! I took them — your gold and your 
dead ! 
Let his soft answer be, *neath the evergreen tree : 
Our blessing, with Christmas, is given to thee ! 

There's a face fairer grows o'er the virginal 
snows, 
That wrap from the blast a young pilgrim and 
stranger, 
In the eyes a sweet light, as of Bethlehem's night 
When worshiped the stars at a birth in a 
manger ; 

It is Time's Latest Bom, 
In the flush of a morn, 
That brings, as we serve him, the palm or the 
thorn! 
And our first loyalty, 'neath the evergreen tree, 
A fireside and feast for his poor ones shall be ! 

Then desert not the strain till it rises again. 
And echoes in gladness from floor unto rafter ; 



68 Studies in Stanzas, 

While the heart's hghtest mood thanks the Giver 
of good, 
His praises arise in its music and laughter. 
And the goblet fill high, 
And the toast we'll drain dry : 
Long life to what's noblest all under the sky ! 
For so reads the decree 'neath the evergreen 

tree, 
Of old father Christmas, whose children are we ! 



• F..^iyH^. ^ 



FRAUD BY HEAVEN. 

'Squire Mullet ever strove to show 

Of all things he possessed a smattering- 
And taught opposing minds to know 

Their folly had no kind of mattering ; 
Nor did he find in all his path 

A rival to dispute his victory, 
Till Parson Smith aroused his wrath, 

By stubborn logic contradictory. 



The village with their warfare rang — 

Or, rather, with the squire's exuberance, 
And tongues, in fierce-opposing clang. 

Inflamed each nose to red protuberance : 
" I think 'tis so," the parson cries, 

" From all that I can comprehend of it." 
" / know it's not," the squire repKes — 

" I knowy you know, and that's the end of it I " 



yo Studies in Stanzas, 

The clashing twain, at certain date, 
Agreed, by way of test-sagacity, 

The next ecHpse to calculate, 

And digits give the moon's opacity. 

By tables long the parson gave 
Nine digits to the orb's obscurity : 

Whereat the squire, with pompous wave, 
■ Declared for eight he'd give security. 

Arrived the night, and lo, the moon 

Of digits showed that nine had darkening, 
Which brought the parson, boastful, soon, 

To vex the squire's indignant hearkening : 
" You'll own you're wrong, sir ? " 

" No, not I ! " 

" To digits eight mistaken laud you lent." 
" ril never own it ! " 

" No ?— and why ? '* 

" Because, sir, the excess is fraudulent ! * 



At the Springs, 71 



AT THE SPRINGS. 

Parent of the Period Loquitor, 

" — And might have done better "—my daughter, 

you mean ? 
Why, that, my old crony, remains to be seen ; 
You speak with the freedom of friendship, you 

say. 
And I will respond in a similar way. 

As brotherly chums in our bachelor lives, 
We came to the Springs on a skirmish for wives, 
As partners in trade many summers we came, 
And now, as old boys, we are hither the same. 

So, let us talk frankly of things as they are : 
You think my Augusta superior, far, 
To him who returned from the ride to the lake, 
Her suitor accepted, my blessing to take. 

Young Jenkins has many a lovable trait, 
And income enough from his father's estate ; 



^2 Studies in Stanzas, 

He followed us here with his heart in his hand, 
A suppliant more than my girl could withstand. 

I'll own he's not brilliant; nor equals, perhaps, 
The average run of society chaps ; 
And halts in a sentence, to think of a word, 
Till ev'ry one pities, or votes him absurd. 

Augusta, you say, has an intellect quick, 
That never was given to mate with a stick ; 
A mind ever tuned to the loftiest strains, 
And worthy at least of a husband of brains. 

It all may be true of my daughter, my friend ; 
But how would you manage the matter to mend ? 
Constrained by no edict of pride or of pelf, 
The choice you deplore she has made for herself. 

A belle of three seasons, she finally brings. 
To Newport at first, and at last to the Springs, 
A fancy untouched by the wooing of wit, 
To yield when a Jenkins lays siege unto it. 

She's had men of intellect round her by scores. 
The gallant and sprightly, as well as the bores ; 



At the Springs, 73 

But none made the venture; from which I infer, 
She didn't want them, and they didn't want her. 

I tell you, old partner, it's rubbish to preach 
Of values unbalanced, where each selects each ; 
Unmatched as they seem to the casual eye, 
They mate by the law of demand and supply. 

M}^ daughter I love, as you very well know, 
And wouldn't be likely to rate her too low, 
But as for the merit o'er Jenkins you sing — 
A woman is worth simply what she will bring. 



74 Studies m Stanzas, 



THE BROKEN RACER. 

Ye thousands of the lofty stand, 

Prolong the mighty cheer, 
That in the cloud of dust at hand, 

And thunder rolling near, 
The beaten red and blue is seen 
Behind the orange and the green ! 

Let peals of exultation strain 

The autumn's airy cup, 
As through the golden-hazed champagne 

The bubbled beads spring up ; 
For, in embattled flight to-day. 
The Favorite bears the prize away ! 

But here and there amid your throng. 

Are hearts to pity moved. 
For him, the Chestnut winner long, 

To Bay the loser proved ; 
Remembering when his royal place 
Was ever foremost in the race. 



The Broken Racer, 75 

How rang your plaudits to the sky 

When he, the whirlwind's son, 
At speed that shook the earth swept by 

The mane of Leamington ; 
And now, above his drooping crest, 
That faded glory is a jest. 

Thus, when before assembled Rome 

The srladiator reeled. 
And he, whose arm had oft struck home, 

Was prone upon the field. 
The voices of his early fame 
To death renounced him for his shame ! 

The glory of the victor's strength, 

Is his, alas ! no more. 
And fresher sinews come, at length, 

To pass him at the score ; 
And whip and spur are pUed in vain, 
He'll never be himself again ! 

Then lead him to his stable back. 

Without a word's caress ; 
The racer, fallen to a hack, 

Than hack itself is less ; 



76 Shtdies in Stanzas. 

Once having won a name the first, 
To lose is to be twice accurst. 

• Not e'en the lackey of his stall, 
Shall yield at pity's touch, 
And be the gentler to his fall 

In pondering how much 
To him who fails is added stmg. 
That he was yesterday a king. 

The honors of a mighty past 
Are lost to present proof, 

When broken is his heart at last, 
And laggard is his hoof ; 

The fallen racer had his day, 

And passes with its light away. 



p 

Just the Trouble. 77 



JUST THE TROUBLE. 

With wild hair hanging about her ears 

And neck ; 
With fair brow wrinkled, her angry tears 

To check ; 
With curl and quiver contending round 

Her mouth ; 
She cometh, her Uncle Sam to sound, — 

The South, 



I 



" You think, I reckon, that I'll forget 

The way, 
I've been maltreated by all your set, 

Some day ; 
You think I mind whatever you do, 

Or don't ; 
But as for saying how far that's true- 

I won't ! 



78 Studies in Stanzas. 

" You think I'm pouting, and must be snubbed, 

Because 
ril not take kindly to what youVe dubbed 

Free laws, 
Whereby my servants are so bereft 

Of tone, — 
When all I ask is just to be left 

Alone I 

'* You think to bring me, from being the best, 

To least, 
Of all your nieces, the North, the West, 

And East, 
By setting above me inferiors once 

I ruled ; 
But soon'U be finding yourself a dunce — 

And fooled ! 

" You think by manner despotic, or 

Neglect, 
To make me seem too Quixotic for 

Respect ; 



Just the Trouble, 79 

Yet I can stand it as long as you please, 

My man, 
And leave you to take what victor's ease 

You can ! 

"You think "—but paused at look from her Un- 
cle Sam, 

That bore, in its blent surprise and fun, 
No sham ; 

" To tell you the truth, my niece ; since here 
You call ; 

I've not been thinking of you, my dear, 
At all J " 



8o Studies in Stanzas* 



THE MAN THEY HANG. 

My dad and mammy drank until 

It ended in a fight ; 
But all his pounding didn't kill, 

For I was born that night. 

And just about the minute same 

That saw me try to creep, 
In boss's barn a pup there came 

Of dogs that hunted sheep. 

They used to say my brother was 

The boss's little beast ; 
And we were called the twins, because 

Our ages matched at least. 

I played with him, and he with me, 

Till he began to show 
A taste for mutton, rather free, 

And then he had to go. 



The Man they Hang, 8i 

That is, he had to go and wear 

A chain, by day and night. 
Because the boss he couldn't bear 

To drown the pup outright. 

" The fault is in his blood," he said, 

" And it would be a shame 
To knock the creature on the head. 

When he is not to blame ! 

" It's only Christian duty, too. 

The beast to watch and keep ; 
Since, long before his birth, we knew 

His breed would slaughter sheep." 

And so they kenneled him at last. 

And kept him fed and tied ; 
And had me from the dooryard cast, 

Because I stamped and cried. 

" Be off, you little vagabond ; 

Nor come again ! " said they ; 
" Your temper's what your father owned ; 

You'll finely end, some day ! " 



82 Studies hi Stanzas. 

Soon after, dad and mammy went 
The way of drinking kind ; 

An awful spree — two pokers bent — 
And I was left behind. 

It took not long for all to rage 
Against me, and they flung 

These words at me : " By parentage 
You're born but to be hung ! " 

And that was so. By casting out, 

And casting out again, 
I've come by murder's reddest route. 

To this black prison-den. 

Well, dad and mammy ill-begot, 

My hanging-day is set ! 
I wonder if that dog's been shot, 

Or if they chain him yet ? 



Certain Verses, ^3 



I 



CERTAIN VERSES 

In anticipation of an absurd proposition that a Mr. Knicker- 
bocker should, some day, be nominated for office in New 
York. 

If gravely the proposal's made, 

And to himself referred it be, 
From what he knows, I'm much afraid, 

He'll deem it an absurdity ; 
Before the gifts of public place, 

And pomps official, share he can. 
He must exchange his native race, — 

He's only an American. 

Our democratic government, 

With universal sufifraging, 
Cannot to such as he be lent, 

Without prodigious huff raging : 
For notice unto Irving Hall, 

Or Tammany, repair he can, 
And find they give him none at all — 

He's only an American. 



84 Studies i7i Stanzas, 

Between the hosts a Kelly leads, 

And those of Ottendorfer class, 
But little grace, howe'er he pleads, 

The Knickerbocker's offer has ; 
Humiliation, swift and tart. 

Himself and kindred spare he can, 
By realizing at the start, 

He's only an American. 

As independent candidate 

What laurels could he cull, again, 
Opposmg, say, a Brennan " slate," 

A Conner, Walsh, or Mulligan ? 
Secure a shadow of support 

From journalism ne'er he can, 
When, 'stead of Celt or German sort, 

He's only an American. 

Depending on his moral worth, 
If, yet, he'll make a fight of it, 

What hope is his, upon the earth, 
Of office, or a sight of it ? 



Certain Verses, 

No native can bring out the vote 
A gentleman from Kerry can ; 

His ticket has no kind of note — 
He's only an American. 

You can't persuade to seek the polls — 

Or think the moment fit is, when 
His city calls — that best of souls, 

The home-born Yankee citizen : 
'Tis but when all the nation goes, 

Find leisure to be there he can, 
And never else — which merely shows 

He's only an American.2 

Wherefrom it seems, that in New York, 

The veriest of mockeries — 
As though in Bremen or in Cork — 

To run a Knickerbocker is : 
Not being either Pat or Hans, 

'Tis simply, in despair, he can 
Confess what forfeits all his chance — 

He's only an American ! 



86 Studies in Stanzas, 



THE RIVEN AEROSTAT. 

Through all the land what sounding fame was 
that 

» 

Which voiced the wonders of an aerostat, 
With mighty leap to spurn the world we tread, 
And sail the trackless distance overhead ; 
To seek the airy current of the sky 
That ever eastward belts the azure high, 
And on the pinions of the tempest glide 
Above the ocean, to its farther side ! 



The very mention of the deed was fraught 
With something potent of a godlike thought. 
And stirred the mind, by soaring fancy won. 
To gage what might be, by what had been, 

done. 
Full oft the sphere by wings of ether borne 
Had sought the zenith, like the sun of morn. 
And, dwindling buoyantly, been lost to view. 
In lesser voyage through the realms of blue. 



The Riven Aerostat* 87 

Before Columbus crossed the western main, 

What fleets had sailed the nearer seas from Spain ; 

And who of all from Europe's coast that went, 

But might, like him, have found a continent ? 

It was the daring of a soul and will 

Beyond his time, that gave him faith and skill 

To start as others, but the farther go, 

And from their knowledge learn the more to know. 

Why, then, impossible the airy flight, 
From hours extended unto day and night ; 
From petty journey in the high expanse, 
To sight of England or the coast of France ? 
The pow'r was there, and needed but the man 
Its might to measure in a nobler span ; 
To do the better what was done before, 
And by the much attained attain the more. 

Thus all the land was filled with loud acclaim, 
And thronging thousands to the pageant came, 
When from the earth should slip its girded hold 
The globe translucent on its venture bold, 



88 Studies in Stanzas, 

And mount like night above the setting sun, 
To course the stars until the race was won, 
To gain the goal ; or, e'en if blown astray, 
For others, coming after, show the way. 

As through the folds the subtle spirit flies, 
To mold the body and to bid it rise, 
Each heart beats faster with a strange delight, 
And eyes flash brighter at the wondrous sight. 
From the low ground a giant form upwells, 
And to a dome of stateliest arching swells. 
Which, rising swifter as the moments pass, 
Looms like a golden temple o'er the grass. 

It rounds the more, as mounting vapors urge, 
Till, like vast planet on the heaven's verge, 
Its poise majestic hides the day from view, 
Save where a glow that seems its own streams 

through ; 
And, spreading grander to the autumn wind. 
As though impatient thus to lag behind, 
Strains at the bonds that hold its glory down, 
And rolls in rustling air its lofty crown. 



The Riven Aerostat. 89 

Almost the act creative is complete ; 
Almost the splendid fabric springs to meet 
The clouds that scud along the ocean track, 
To lap its beauties in their fleecy rack : 
When, with supremest effort to be free. 
In one fierce burst to be, or not to be. 
It flutters, pants, is rended, to a shout — 
A vision ended, and a light blown out ! 



As at the crisis of some mighty part, 

Of its own passion breaks the actor's heart ; 

As through a mortal tenement of clay 

The soul too mighty finds by death its way : 

What erst aspired to reach the starry heights, 

Through days of toiling and through vigiled 

nights, 
By its own spirit torn and downward cast. 
Sank to the earth a lifeless wreck at last. 

Let those who late the brave attempt approved. 
To sneering pity of the fall be moved, 
And say to others of their specious ilk : 
The thing was cotton when it should be silk. 



90 Studies in Stanzas. 

Thus ever that which garb the humblest wears, 
More than the soul in dainty texture dares ; 
Thus when its failure shows a strength unthought, 
The fate of Fustian is the lesson caught ! 

But once a thought of deed sublime conceived, 

It grows by failures still to be retrieved ; 

If in one form too great of act to live, 

Unto another it can potence give. 

Made strong by knowing what its strength can 

bear. 
And braver, learning what it has to dare, 
Its final fruits its promises transcend. 
And vindicate its genius in the end. 

So though, by energy inspired too well, 

Within the hour of victory it fell ; 

Though through the wound along its riven side 

Rushed forth the soaring spirit of its pride ; 

The grand idea visioned in its birth 

Lives yet to teach its kind to spurn the earth ; 

And to the loftiest current of the skies, 

At last the ocean-aerostat shall rise ! 



^^ Puts'' and ''Calls!' 91 



" PUTS " AND " CALLS." 

A WALL STREET IDYL. 

For six fair years, good wife of mine, 

The world as married folks has known us, 
Since first I Put my lips to thine, 

And gave to thee a ring as Bonus. 
It scarcely seems so distant now, 

And yet our ages show it, certes ; 
A matronly Five-Twenty, thou, 

And I'm amongst the Seven-Thirties. 

Perchance when thou, with soothing air. 

Hast called me " Duck ! " I've been a lame one ; 
Or when thy mother styled me '' Bear ! " 

I've been a Bull — though quite a tame one ; 
But if one's Shares of good intent 

Are not what he is always large in. 
At least I'm sure I never meant 

That mine should have too small a Margin. 



92 Studies in Stanzas, 

If e'er that I was Short in Stock 

Of patience, thou hast been a mourner : 
Or I'd a Check from thee, to lock 

My warmest feeUngs in a Corner, 
Exchange of Notes on the above 

Has quickly sped the mood disgusted. 
And left us Long in Bonds of love. 

With all our Diff'rences Adjusted. 

Nor need I fear to ask, of right, 

What in our Days of Grace was proffered, 
That thou should'st not Protest at Sight 

Of poverty, if Draught were offered ; 
Thy promise then to bear with all 

The chills of fate without a shiver, 
In Fixed Security I Call 

Its Verbal Contract to Deliver. 

That by a turn of fortune's wheel, 
Fm poorer than a young mechanic, 

Is but enough to make us feel, 

I'm sure, but merest passing Panic ; 



''Puts'' and '' Calls !' 93 

And if we can no longer dress 

In cloth and silk of costly tissue, 
We'll have our children still to bless, 

Nor ever deem them Over-Issue. 

Beyond the city's crowded ranks. 

In humbler home and lesser striving, 
A hearty Run upon the Banks 

May bring our early youth's reviving : 
And if the future of my life 

Should be the present cloud's revoker, 
ril charge it to the dearest Wife 

That ever blessed a Broken Broker. 



94 Studies hi Stanzas. 



AT EASTER. 

In Lent's last twilight lulled to sleep 

By soft cathedral bells, 
While yet upon the April air 

The solemn organ swells, 
Her thoughts go out in vestal dreams 

To greet the Easter day, 
As buoyant as the birds of dawn. 

And innocent as they. 



The cadence of the hymn is lost 

In prima donna's trill, 
That mingles with the merry note 

Of polka and quadrille ; 
And where but now the priest and choir 

Intoned the doom of wrong, 
The strains of Offenbach inspire 

The fantasies of song. 



At Easter. 95 

No longer draped in mournful serge 

For man's repented guiles, 
The altar of the brightening church 

Entwined with lilies smiles ; 
While through the sacred portal throngs 

A bridal train more fair 
Than ever saw, with waking eyes, 

The girlish dreamer there. 

Then o'er the broadening summer-land 

Of forest, field and stream, 
The lover's-walk, the archery, 

The dancing sail agleam ; 
Her maiden fancy wings its way, 

Sweets sipping as it goes, 
Herself spring's sweetest violet. 

And summer's fairest rose. 



96 Studies 171 Stanzas, 



THE MUTE. 

Four kindred Spirits stood around a grave 
Wherefrom the dark, dissevered mourner-train 
Had slow recoiled into the world again, 

Like parted cable lapsing in the wave. 

One touched the headstone lightly as a cloud ; 
And One upon the right hand faced the Third, 
Who, on the left, trod softly as a bird ; 

The Last, unmoving, at the feet was bowed. 

From all a golden light of life was cast ; — 
A soft, transcendent luster of the eye, 
The subtle glory native to the sky ; — 

From all save her, the bowed, unmoving Last. 

She at the tablet-marble of the head 

A gleaming trump and scroll of parchment 
bore; 

She on the right the sword and balance wore : 
A spotless shield before the Third was spread ; 



The Mute. 97 

But for the bending Spirit at the feet, 
In robes of sable clad and drooping veil, 
No emblem gracious shone to tell the tale 

Of lofty mission from a life complete. 

*' Hence swiftly flying from his grave," said Fame, 
'"' 'Tis mine to trumpet over all the earth 
The life-ennobling story of his worth, 

And write the deathless honors of his name ! " 

" And mine," said Justice, " e'er to follow thee. 
That naught o'ertold the final truth defile ;" 
"And mine," said Mercy, "both to reconcile; 

And to the Fourth, unmoving, turned the Three. 

" Oh thou, our sister, motionless and mute ! 

For us who speech and scroll of memory gave ; 

Thou bride of Death and angel of the Grave, 
Of mortal growth to God the sweetest fruit — 

" We leave thee watching, where no others are, 

In sable draped that we may whiter shine ; 

All that we are is lesser grace than thine. 

And thou the cloud that folds our natal star ! " 
4 



98 Studies in Stanzas. 

Then upward winging through the ether, fleet, 
With arms enclasped, arose the shiningThree ; 
' But ever, fading, looking back to thee, 
Thou Shade Eternal, bowing at the feet.3 

For thou art Silence ; hiding in thy breast 
The all that to the shadows of the tomb 
Might give a deeper barrier of gloom. 

And move the world's dead anchors to unrest. 



Hygeia in the South, 99 



HYGEIA IN THE SOUTH. 

Extract from a private letter. 

" Heed not, my friend, the foolish tales you hear 
Of Southern sickness in this summer season ; 

They're based on idlest rumors, far and near, 
Without a particle of truth or reason. 

Like all the world we have our heated term. 
When vital vigor less, in some degree, grows. 

But this involves no dread disease's germ. 
Except for negroes. 



" The fevers few, that come with rainy spring, 
And into later periods have extension. 

Are rarely, I assure you, anything 

That can't be shunned by very slight attention. 

Perhaps the stranger feels a little ill. 

If he with fruit and evening air too free grows ; 

But they whom these malarial trifles kill, 
Are chiefly negroes. 



loo Studies in Stanzas, 

" It may be true, the Asiatic scourge 
Is more or less with us until October ; 

But mild it is, to merest meagrim's verge, 
To those whose living, for a time, is sober. 

It works its worst where first it did arrive, 
In town that by the river or the sea grows ; 

Yet even there, the ones who don't survive, 
Are mainly negroes. 

" Aside from spinal troubles, now and then. 
And qualms dyspeptic, feasts to put a check on, 

We, Southern people — children, dames and men, 
Are healthier far than man}^ Yanks, I reckon. 

Our servile class will riot, till we get 

Its substitute from China, where the tea grows ; 

But, even here, those paying nature's debt, 
Are wholly negroes." 



The Triumph, loi 



THE TRIUMPH. 



April lo 1871. 



Now joy to Barbarossa, 

Upon this April day, 
When German landsmen hold the lines 

Of Bowery and Broadway ;4 
As erst, a few short weeks ago, 

The pleasant sons of Cork * 
Obstructed all thy chosen streets. 

From morn till night. New York ! 

Through groves of Prussian banners, 

With trumpet, fife and drum, 
In pomp of battle's stem array 

And peaceful trade they come ; 
A Rhine incarnate winding through 

A Hving double coast. 
To where the chiefs of state and town 

Salute the endless host. 



* St. Patrick's Day celebration. 



102 Studies in Stanzas, 

All glory to the Empire ! 

A million plaudits ring, 
And glory to the peace that makes 

A Kaiser of a king ! 
A mighty fortress is our God, 

And we, across the sea, 
Join greetings with the Emperor 

To him for victory ! 

In thunder speaks the cannon 

And swells the glowing song, 
While ev'ry high and by-way rolls 

Its multitudes along; 
As erst, a few short weeks ago, 

The pleasant sons of Cork 
Obstructed all thy chosen streets 

With marshaled throngs, New York. 

Now sway the cheering thousands, 

That choke the city's path. 
While from a score of throats there comes 

A sudden burst of wrath : 



The Triumph. 103 

" Vot for you dries dese bushings here, 

Unt growdings, in der jam ? 
1 dinks you is some Frenchman scared 

Of Unser Fritz, by tarn ! " 

It is a dusty stranger, 

Of aspect most forlorn, 
With diff'rent face and speech from them, 

And garments rudely torn, 
Who wears a look of frenzied haste, 

x\nd pants, and crowds again ; 
While ever still they thrust him back — 

These swarming Deutschermen. 

" 'Tis three o'clock approaches — 

I have a note to meet — 
I can't get down to bank or store, 

By any single street — 
The cars are all in close blockade, 

And Fm a ruined man 
If longer stayed — oh, who will help 

A poor American ! " 



104 Studies in Stanzas. 

Thus speaks the frantic stranger, 

They will not let him pass, 
Till steps there forward one whose mien 

Proclaims the ruling class : 
" Be aisy now, ye Dootchmen there, 

And let the crayture go ; 
For, sure, it's joost the likes av him 

Once owned the town, ye know. 

" The likes av him, be jabers, 

Have gev to us and yez 
The right to take the town we're in 

And run it as we plaze ; 
The likes av him don't vote at all 

When Hans and Pat contind ; 
But if ye taze the crayture, he 

May bate us in the ind!" 

They hear his words of wisdom, 

These sons of fatherland. 
And back, to give the stranger way, 

They roll on either hand : 



The Triumph, to5 

And, like to one of sense bereft, 
Speeds on the wretched man : 

Past three o'clock ! — a bankrupt is 
The poor American. 



Now joy to Barbarossa 

Upon this April day, 
When German landsmen hold the lines 

Of Bowery and Broadway ; 
As erst, a few short weeks ago, 

The pleasant sons of Cork 
Obstructed all thy chosen streets. 

From mom till night. New York ! 



io6 Studies in Stanzas. 



VOX DEL 

" The demons of the mob," said he, " in that 

masked hell of hate around us, 
Were pressing closer on our ranks, with howls 

and curses to confound us ; 
Another moment's peace with those who roared 

for blood, from curb to girder. 
Had been the filling of a storm to burst in whirls 

of fire and murder. 



" We saw our allies, the police, hemmed in and 
checked along our borders ; 

Then faced upon the foe and fired — " 

Yes, soldier, fired without your orders ! 

Your regiment awaited not the word command- 
ing duly given. 

" And yet the order given was, I tell thee, citi- 
zen, by heaven ! " 



Vox Dei. 107 

Who given by, then, soldier, pray? 

" That question I have solved already ; 
'Twas Heaven itself the order gave while yet our 

menaced flanks were steady. 
So, let the rescued city say we fired without 

command and blund'red ; 
They take from Providence the word who fifty 

slay to save five hundred! "5 



io8 Studies in Stanzas, 



THE NINE. 

Oft had I heard, in lodgings next to mine, 
An eager, manly voice invoke " the Nine ! " 
And, straightway after, something scraped and 

boomed, 
As though my neighbor strode, and stamped, 

and fumed. 

Sure 'tis a bard, whose burning soul, thought I, 
To woo the muses lifts its pleading cry ; 
And coining verses worthy of his fair, 
The lone composer stalks and beats the air. 

Once, when we met, I could not help but ask: 
' Is ended bravely, sir, your rhyming task ? 
Our rooms adjoining, I've o'erheard your plea 
To all the daughters of Mnemosyne, — 

'' Heard how you raved — " His staring struck 

me dumb ; 
'' Mnemosy — who, sir ? Oh, see here, now ! 

Come! 



The Nine, 109 

I'm swinging Kehoe's clubs, for nerve, before 
We meet the base-ball nine from Baltimore. 

Brood of high Jove, that haunt Castilian fount ! 
The classic number, old, by which you count. 
And by the poet held divinely fast — 
To what Base uses it has come at last ! 



no Studies in Stanzas, 



PRO PATRIA MORI. 

The stricken soldier, whitening into death 
From reddest flush of strongest hfe and breath, 
Is like the Year, from autumn's fires aglow, 
In wintry tempest brought to shroud of snow. 
Not his to die where weeping women kneel. 
And manhood's specter craves the hand to heal ; 
From height supreme of manliest might he falls, 
'Mid flame and smoke that weave a thousand 

palls ; 
One moment meteor of the cloud and blaze, 
The next his life-blood ebbs w^here cattle graze ; 
Through roars of armies, harrowing the skies, 
While fates of nations tremble as they rise. 
He hears the captain's call, the gunner's ^hout, 
And in the crash his lion soul goes out. 

As follows spring upon the year that died — 
Not weak with summer, but in winter's pride — 
To write in flow'rs, for epitaph and text, 
O.ie season's story that shall rule the next. 



Pro Patria Mori, m 

Come thou with garlands radiant in bloom 
To cast upon thine honored soldier's tomb ; 
With roses, lilies, violets repair. 
And in their simple beauty leave them there ; 
To be, like him, the glory of an hour. 
And, in full fragrance, perish by the show'r. 
His young, strong life, like theirs, to earth re- 
turned. 
Makes sweeter store by mother Nature urned, 
Undwindling caught, for future years to be 
A might and incense deathless for the free. 



112 Studies in Stanzas. 



THE "LAST" MAN. 

Venus herself, at her mirror, beheld not so 
proper a 

Beauty as she who looked down from a box at 
the opera, 

Scanning with glass all the numerous faces up- 
turned to her, 

Heedless that many a heart in the multitude 
burned to her. 



Sudden she said to a friend in the chair by the 

side of her — 
One of the many who'd thought that ere this 

they'd have died of her — 
" Yonder, with head at a sag, and in ulster 

diagonal, 
Stands there a man whom I certainly recognize, 

sag an' all ! " 



The ''Last'' Man» 113 

Then she grew pensive, nor listened to Gerster's 

sweet aria : 
" Yes, I have known him, although he's grown 

sleeker and hairier ; 
Dim recollections, untraceable, seem to reveal to 

me, 
That I have seen yon identical gentleman kneel 

to me ! " 

Surely it could not be possible she had the heart- 

lessness 
Thus to betray a rejection, with parodied art- 

lessness ; 
Surely if all her most blinded admirers had been 

jury, 
They'd have decided 'twas adding an insult to 

injury. 

But, from a spell of deep thoughtfulness, verging 

on tragical. 
Changed she to smiles, with a startling celerity 

magical : — 



1 14 Studies in Stanzas, 

" Now all the bars of this memory's mystery 

melt to me ! 
Bend, and I'll whisper the name of the mortal 

who's knelt to me." 

So, when you meet her, for fun you may say, if 
you please, to her, 

All that you know of the man who has been on 
his knees to her ; 

Making her footsteps obey, as but very few do 
make her, 

He is no other, in fact, than her ladyship's — shoe- 
maker ! 



Epithalamium, - 115 



EPITHALAMIUM. 

The rose in bloom not surer shows 
That summer's reign is at its prime, 

Than that the cheek on which it glows 
Has ripened for the wedding-time. 

Ring forth upon the balmy air 
The bells that for the lily swing ; 

Not they more wonderfully fair 

Than she the bridal courtiers bring. 

One moment at the altar bowed, 

With him, her summer prince, beside, 

The next, in lace and satin cloud, 
She rises to her throne, a bride. 

A something softened in her grace, 
Like twilight from a day in June. 

She catches on her mantling face 
The luster of the honeymoon. 



ii6 • Studies in Stanzas, 

And dreams the golden round of days 
That circles thence, like ring from gem, 

Shall gleam o'er all her future ways, 
Her life's first summer diadem. 

The bridal season's happy hours, 
Its seas divine, its fairy main ; — 

We pray they die not with the flow'rs, 
Unless, like them, to live again. 



Brother Blathers, 117 



BROTHER BLATHERS. 

Well, brother Blathers, on my life, your luck 

In being advertised beats all creation ; 
Each tempest turns for you into a puff, 

From out your nominal great tribulation. 
Walk on your hands around your pulpit's verge, 

Cut pigeon-wings and endless monkey capers, 
And what for any other man were shame. 

For you is common fame in all the papers. 

I well remember you when hither come, 

A tramping lecturer, from Western college, 
How you selected subjects loudly small. 

By noise to hide your want of schoolboy 
knowledge. 
And how the country press, especially, 

Was fond of quoting your Blatheriana 
Deceived by platitudes of common gush, 

Roared in conceitedly uncommon manner. 



ii8 SttuUes 111 Stanzas. 

With all your buncombe, though, and postures 
wild, 
We thought you honest in devout convictions, 
And hailed you worthy when you found a 
church. 
And poured from thence on sin your maledic- 
tions. 
Not meek and lowly, you exactly seemed ; 

Indeed you had some ways too like a show- 
man ; 
Yet when the public crave that sort of thing, 
A little touch of Barnum injures no man. 



But when you had that wedding on the stage, 

Some few old-fashioned Christians rather 
doubted ; 
Nor did you gain thereafter their esteem 

Because you higher pranced and louder 
shouted. 
That weekly-paper business, too, of yours. 

Destroyed the faith full many souls had in you ; 
Though still they held you not a man of sin, 

So much as one of strange, gymnastic sinew. 



Brother Blathers, 119 

The church-debt-raising damaged you the worst, 

In having aspect of a trick unholy ; 
Nor did your sermons on the city slums 

Remove that sinister impression wholly ; 
So, at the Presbytery's friendly move, 

To try you on a common fame unflattering, 
Your simplest-minded followers could scarce 

Restrain their sympathetic teeth from chat- 
tering. 

Your weekly-paper pubHsher could tell 

How you had run his property to tatters, 
And then a puff for self had smuggled in. 

Behind his back — with divers other matters. 
And your own banker, too, could, say of you : 

" The parson used my name, in cash pedantics 
To raise subscriptions to his church's dues — 

Assisters to his cussins's and his antics." 



For once the journals' blatant type would prove 
For you no gratifying advertising, 

Since, if the charges specified were true, 
About your fall there'd be no more surmising ; 



120 Studies hi Stanzas, 

But when the trial duly comes at last, 

With all its grand array of proofs alarming — 

What is it but your crowning chance to turn 
Just one more flip-flap for the public's charm- 
ing? 

The stern tribunal dwindles, at the start. 

Into a group, as 'twere, of ancient females, 
No more in strength and body what 't should be, 

Than smallest beer is like the choicest cream 
ales; 
And as for witnesses to make you wince, 

As early promised, in due form pretentious, 
To testify against a man so good, 

They're all, confoundedly, too conscientious. 

Thus change the flourishes which made the 
press 

Above a fancied case of pastoral dolours. 
Into a full brass band to your success, 

And you come off, of course, with flying colors. 
A fortnight's flaming head-lines, day by day. 

Implying woe for him whom churchmen tackle, 
Resolve themselves into a first-class puff 

For that same martyr and his tabernacle. 



Brother Blathers, 121 

Hence, Brother Blathers, as I said before, 

Your advertising luck beats all creation, 
And so much greater is your gain in print, 

The greater seems your passing tribulation. 
Throw somersaults all round your pulpit's verge, 

Stand on your head, cut multifarious capers. 
And what for any other man were shame. 

For you is common fame in all the papers. 



122 Studies in Stanzas. 



IN LENT. 

So late her lilied beauties caught 

The lustrous radiance of the ball, 
Where music's wave of dancers sought 

Her airy footstep's rise and fall, 
That even in her sackcloth train 

Some elfin light and motion are, 
As eyes turned from it yet retain 

The ray and twinkle of a star. 



Upon the twihght veil of Lent 

Her face is like a truant beam, 
Escaped from sunlit firmament 

To rest upon a forest stream ; 
Or, like a daisy of the field, 

That, straying, in a pensive mood, 
Is but the lovelier revealed 

Through darkening vistas of the wood. 



In Lent, 123 

And here, where brooding shadows soft, 

Through painted windows, touch her head, 
And, 'neath the vaulted arches, oft 

HumiHation's prayer is said, 
She bows in meekness at a shrine 

That earth's frail vanities should mock, 
And blossoms in that shade divine, 

The flower of all the rector's tlock. 



124 Studies in Stanzas, 



THE DEAD NAPOLEON. 

January 9, 1873. 

To the long sleep he lays him down at last, 

Dying- an exile in a foreign land ; 
Lonely of all that thronged his mighty past, 

Save the true wife who chngs unto his hand. 

Taunts of the foe shall sting his soul no more, 
Dreams of a triumph stir him not to joy ; 

Only to mourn the glories gone before, 
Left to the weeping mother of his boy. 

Let the coarse lip be curled in fierce disdain, 
Now that an empire lives not in his glance ; 

Let the rude jeer be pointed once again 
At the departed majesty of France ! 

Borne to his grave, he will not feel it now ; 

Lying in sepulcher, he cannot hear ; 
And the imperial bending of his brow 

Smoothes into death beneath a woman's tear. 



The Dead Napoleon, i^5 

Mock at the head in dust that lieth down, 

Once for its wearing what the mobsman 
scorns ; 

Echo the rabble's hatred of a crown, 

E'en as it spurned and hated one of thorns ! 

To the lone dead it bringeth naught of shame, 
That on his fortune set a wintry sun ; 

Something sublime of his great kinsman's name 
Dwells with the cold and still Napoleon. 

In the bleak land where once that kinsman's star 
Paled at a burning city's stoic scoff. 

His was the hand relighting, brighter far. 
Torched by the guns that rent the Malakhoff. 

By the same sword that brought him from the 
throne. 

Breaking in battle mightier than he, 
Freedom's Italia gave he to her own, 

From the white Alpine summits to the sea. 

Through the dread woe and shadow of Sedan, 
Crownless the empire catches as it flits, 

Fire from a Solferino and the man 
True to her memories of Austerlitz. 



126 Studies in Stanzas, 

Queen of the dead, beside her dead she bows 
In her own passion France the y^t accurst ; 

Helpless of him, the last her pride to rouse, 
Borne to his tomb in distant Chiselhurst. 

But, by the matchless glories of the past, 
Marvel of story for the tongue and pen, 

Caesar shall come unto his own at last. 
When her avenging eagles soar again! 



Humor s Iliad. 12; 



HUMOR'S ILIAD. 

The liquid laugh hilarious hails the jest 

From trifling tongue, or facile fancy's store, 

And wit's unwisest zanyable zest 

Awakes the long-resounding, ribald roar. 

But scarce a smile on lip the lightest greets 
The masking mirth of many a mournful thing, 

That, grimly grave, has unctuous under-beats, 
As 'neath the turgid tide's the bubbling spring. 

Full often souls in silvery song supreme, 
By bodies bent to groaning grief are borne ; 

Full oft the depths of dreariest drivel teem 
With marks of Momus, merry as the morn. 

The simple sophist's garrulous '' Go West ! " — 
The native newsman's fearful foreign flights — 

The doleful doctrine Darwin has exprest — 
The sermon Spurgeon seriously writes — 



128 Sttcdies in Stanzas. 

All are but jokes on yawning Yankee youth — 
A humor spun at transatlantic speed — 

The slyest slap at scientific truth — 

A comic treatment of the churchman's creed. 

In them an awkward aiming to amuse, 

Through gloomy gravity, imperfect gleams ; 

Bewilders brain 'twixt grin and groan to choose, 
And half of humor, half of horror seems. 

More mortals mean to find facetious fame 
Than can command the cachinnating sound ; 

Their words and works, despite themselves, are 
tame. 
And, failing to be funny, prove profound. 

Lo, Huxley harping Protoplastic pleas, 
And Stuart Mill to woman-warring won ; 

They turned, perchance, to tangled themes like 
these, 
From palled perplexity to plan a pun. 

Full many a man of quaintly-comic whim. 

Has sadly sighed when critics crude have spoke. 

Because, for sober savant taking him, 

His metaphysics made them miss his joke. 



Humors Iliad, i2g 

The boldest book bewildering the breast, 
The strangest words by skeptic science' said, 

May shrine untold, unutterable jest, 
Througn impulse impotent to mafke it read. 

No longer lag a limit to install 

Between the gay and grave, in petty poise ; 
But learn-save heaven's high writ-to laugh at 
all 

Of knowledge, nonsense, knavery and noise. 



130 Studies in Sta?tzas, 



THE JESTER'S BURIAL. 

In the land of Aibmuloc, 

Lo, a host, in motley drest, 
Bear, in last, fantastic march, 

Mij, the jester, to his rest ! 

Hues of crimson, blue and gold, 
Quaint and garish, glow and shine ; 

E'en the shrouded cap and bells 
Nod and tinkle down the line. 

These, the colors of his life, 

Round the sable of his bier, 
Mock the pity of the sight. 

Like a rainbow on a tear. 

Through the roll of muffled drums. 

Through the trumpet's measured blare, 

Steal the distant medley sounds 
Of a ribald, dancing air! 



The yesters Burial. 131 

His in life to follow them, 

When the dizzy whirl was fast, 

Blending ghastly with a knell, 
Now they follow him at last. 

In the tinsel home he left 

May be those whose eyes are dim ; 
But in all the gazing crowd 

None there are to weep for him. 

Looking where his corse is borne, 
They,, who bore his laughing rule, 

Smile at later folly's birth, 
In the dying of the fool. 

Not a sigh to honor now 

All the merry jests he gave ; 
Not a friendly hand to cast 

Flow'rs upon the jester's grave. 

One is dead whose daring mirth 

Pride abashed and honor vext, 
Virtue mocked and truth defied — 

One is dead — and Hve the next! 



132 Studies in Stanzas, 

Winds the dismal pageant show 
In its tawdry pomp along, 

Like the burden of a dirge 

Striving with a drinker's song. 

What shall be the preacher's words 
When before the cross he brings 

Pleadings for the motley fool 
To the mighty King of kings ? 

In the land of Aibmuloc 

They have cited to the crown, 

Not the wisdom of the wise, 

But the colors of the clown; — 

From the glories of the court, 
From the barony of gold, 

Spurned the slower modest worth. 
For the folly that is bold. 

Poor the prize that merit wins, 
Toiling in a grave behest, 

When the treasures of a realm, 
Are the guerdon of a jest! 



The yesters Burial, 133 

God is just ; and who shall say, 
If, where none may dare to mock, 

Mij, the jester, he will blame, 
Or the land of Aibmuloc? 



BALLADS AND BROADSIDES. 



(135) 



A Fable of Finance, 137 



A FABLE OF FINANCE. 

There was a rich banker in Wall street re- 
nowned, 
With clerks a small army and desks all around ; 
His offices stately presented a mass 
Of fancy black walnut and costly plate-glass. 

Chorus. 

Properly rebuking impertinent curiosity as to a matter of strict- 
ly private concern : 

In the banking, insurance or railroading line, 
'Tis the custom your rivals in style to outshine ; 
But if pressed with the question, whence cometh 

the pay ? 
I must answer — Ri-tooral, ri-tooral, li-day. 

This banker received the deposits of those 
Who wanted them safe from burglarious foes ; 
And likewise of people with funds to invest 
In ventures returning the interest best. 



138 Sttidies in Stanzas. 

Chorus. 

Explaining how you pay your interest upon the deposits left 
with you, and yet make a small stake by the generous 
transaction : 

When you give me your riches to keep till you 

call, 
In a stock or a loan do I put them out all. 
But supposing stock falls, or the loan's lost, you 

say ? 
Then it's— Tooral, ri-tooral, ri-tooral, li-day 1 

No end of accounts in this manner came in, 
Of anxious to save, and of anxious to win ; 
And ev'ry one said, what a fortune must be 
Inclosed in the vaults of this man's treas-u-ry. 

Chorus. 

Showing that therein exists a trifling error, scarcely worth men- 
tioning : 

It's quite banking custom such fortunes to lend 
To a railroad or bank for its next dividend ; 
Then if all goes on well there's usurious pay, 
If it doesn't— Ri-tooral, ri-tooral, li-day ! 



A Fable of Finance, 139 

At last the rich banker in finances skilled, 
With schemes for a highway most novel was 

filled ; 
The same to be called, when its tracks were all 

laid, 
The Huge-Universal-Mid-Bound'ry-Up-Grade. 

Chorus. 

Coolly setting forth the geography of this great undertaking, and 
its sources of rich revenues. 

'Twas from pole unto pole that this highway 

should go, 
To the great open sea of the Arctic, you know ; 
Many tourists take up, bears and seals bring 

away, 
With a — Tooral, ri-tooral, ri-tooral, li-day ! 



He called on the rich to subscribe for the shares, 
And also the poor who would be millionaires. 
'Twas interest in gold they would pay in a trice 
Secured by a good bond and mortgage on ice. 



140 Studies in Stanzas. 

» 
Chorus. 

Defining the great ease of manner with which aforesaid interest 
could be paid : 

From the money paid down for the stock, he 
could meet 

All the interest prescribed, till the road was com- 
plete ; 

And, at last, if the work didn't happen to pay, 

Why the shares were— Ri-tooral, ri-tooral, li- 
day ! 

With praise of the scheme ev'ry paper was full, 
And each money-editor in it a " bull ;'* 
'Twill greatly develop our country, they said, 
And show if John Franklin's alive or is dead. 

Chorus. 

Delicately intimating why journalism is never backward in en- 
couraging a noted public enterprise of this nature : 

There are journals so sanguine of railroad suc- 
cess. 

That a part of the stock they themselves may- 
possess ; 



A Fable of Finance. 141 

And if how they came by it you'd have them 

betray , 
They will tell you — Ri-tooral, ri-tooral, li-day ! 

The banker's depositors caught at the thing, 
And cried, let us into this gold-bearing ring : 
And so did the people all over the land, 
Who other stocks had, or the money on hand. 

Chorus. 

Expressive of the childlike trust reposed in the wisdom and 
honor of the few by the many : 

If a few wealthy men of good mercantile fames. 
To an enterprise lend their respectable names. 
It must surely be just what its managers say — 
Or the signers are — Tooral, ri-tooral, li-day ! 

Then ten savings banks purchased shares in it 

too, 
And banks of all kinds bought the stock as it 

grew ; 
And model trust companies took it In trade, — 
This Huge-Universal-Mid-Bound'ry-Up-Grade. 



142 Studies in Stanzas. 

Chorus. 

Indicating the judicious policy followed by such institutions in 

such case : 

If your trust-institution, your bank, or its like, 
On a good speculation believes it can strike, 
It is not slow to reap what it can in that way ; 
Though it sometimes — Ri-tooral, ri-tooral, li- 
day ! 

At last there were millions invested therein. 
And waiting for trips on the road to begin, 
When some one discovered, and told with a 

bawl. 
No road of the kind had been builded at all ! 

Chorus. 

Informing the reader how it might have happened that the H. 
U. M. B. U. G. was not built : 

In the cost of proclaiming the bonds are for sale 
And of working the market that holders shan't 

fail, 
Such a very large sum is exhausted, some way. 
That the railroad itself is — Ri-tooral, li-day ! 



A Fable of Finance, 143 

Down tumbled the stock, with a rush, at the 

sound. 
And banks, brokers, buyers, in frenzy were found ; 
And when to the banker the multitude went, 
They found he*d " suspended " and paid not a 

cent ! 

Chorus. 

To be sung with great animation in the nearest bankrupt court: 

There are railroads too many this day in the 

land, 
And the stock of the best scarcely profits the 

hand ; 
But to buy into more, with the hope that they'll 

pay, 

Is a — Tooral, ri-tooral, ri-tooral, li-day ) 



144 Studies in Stanzas. 



CONDENSED TRAGEDIES. 

Vide the daily papers. 

Greene saw the boat was off, and wildly flew 

for it. 
The life insurance folks cried, " Let 'em sue for 

it." 

Jane used camphene to light her fire the faster. 
" We lay her to her rest," intoned the pastor. 

Smith blew the gas out ere the bed he gUded for, 
Leaving his family quite unprovided for. 

To learn if charged, Jones breathed into his 

fowling-piece. 
His widow's uncle will support his howling niece. 

Brown thought he'd flirt with Simpson's wife a 

little. 
The jury stood a dozen for acquittal. 



Condensed Tragedies, 145 

" I'll shave," said Ruth, of woman's rights the 

forerunner. 
" The razor must have slipped," observed the 

coroner. 

Stiles jumped to reach a moving rail-car's plat- 
form. 
A home's bereavement shocking is in that form. 

'' What whisky one can stand," said Tompkins, 

"try, oh, let's." 
His sleep is sweet beneath the early violets. 

His shop-girls put on top-most floor did Blaney. 
After the fire they didn't count so many. 

Jinks tried to stop, by hand, a something-or- 

other-in' saw. 
" My daughter's next shan't smoke," remarked 

his mother-in-law. 



H^ Shtdies in Stanzas. 



THE COMMON LOT. 

It was a solid Boston man, 

Majestic as a stork, 
Who thought to have another scan — 

A skeptic from New York — 
Without preparing for the thing, 

His city's ancient pride, 
That Common which she thinks a king 

Would joy to be inside. 



He took thereto, by devious ways, 

The infidel in charge, 
Through winding streets in grievous maze, 

And alleys small and large ; 
Not saying whither he would lead. 

Nor yet intending to, 
Until the transcendental mead 

Should burst upon their view. 



The Common Lot, 147 

At last a sudden corner turned, 

There beamed upon the sight 
That vision the Bostonian yearned 

To have his friend delight ; 
And then — alas ! the bitter cup 

Commended on the spot ! — 
" Whv don't you build your city up ? 

Who owns that vacant lot?" 



148 Studies hi Stanzas. 



THE COMIC CHRISTIAN CLERGYMAN. 

Of all the incongruities terrestrial nature shows — 
The splendid peacock's horrid voice, the thorn 

beneath the rose, 

The lowest range of reason joined to beauty's 

highest air — 

There's none, for shocking mortal sense of fitness, 

can compare 

With the comic Christian clergyman, 

One of the latest time. 

By bonds of poor estate in youth to humblest 

schools confined, 
And then, mayhap, in knowledge versed — of 

Western college kind ; 
Too crude to doctor bodies sick, or as attorney 

plod. 
He's bold to dose the dying soul, and prate the 

laws of God — 

Is the comic Christian clergyman, 
One of the latest time. 



The Comic Christian Clergyman, 149 

Within the rustic meeting house installed at first, 
he sees 

That something of a startling sort with common 
taste agrees, 

And burns therein to emulate your city preach- 
er's fame, 

By saying things unorthodox, and earning thus 
the name 

Of a comic Christian clergyman, 
One of the latest time. 



'Tis whispered in the mighty town, a '' stunner " 
new is found ! 

(Perhaps a funny lecture there he tries, the way 
to sound,) 

Then comes a picked committee forth, of church- 
men great and small, 

To hear, to laugh with aching sides, and straight- 
way give a call. 

To this comic Christian clergyman. 
One of the latest time. 



150 Studies in Stanzas. 

They build a spacious church for him, fantastic in 

its style, 
With graces of the play-house form in gallery 

and aisle ; 
And on a structure like a stage the arch-per- 
former stands. 
Prepared to beat the best, if need, by walking on 
his hands. 

Like a comic Christian clergyman, 
One of the latest time. 

Then to the sacred edifice the population pour, 
With expectation of a treat surpassing all before ; 
The sermon is to show that Paul was fogyish, 

because 
He hadn't been a Congressman — and this evokes 
applause 

For the comic Christian clergyman, 
One of the latest time. 

He coughs, and then goes on to say, that Paul, 

in all his life. 
Appeared opposed to woman's rights — but never 

had a wife ; 



The Comic Christian Clergyman, i5^ 

For had he owned the sex's sway, not thus speak 

out he'd dare ! 
And all his hearers laugh and say— he surely had 
him there ! 

Did our comic Christian clergyman, 
One of the latest time. 

The clap of hands, the trill of mirth, respond to 

him throughout 
His most facetious ministry and wild rhetoric 

rout ; 
And when his windy book appears, uncouth of 

tone and wit, 
A more amusing moral work, they say, was 

never writ 

By a comic Christian clergyman, 
One of the latest time. 

His greatest joke of all, howe'er, is when his 

church is burned, 
And he and all his motley flock upon the town 

are turned : 



152 Shidies in Stanzas. 

"■ Since Providence makes light of it, our church 

was naught ! " He ! He ! 
" Let's hire a theater, and hold a fancy-fair 
levee," 

Says the comic Christian clergyman, 
One of the latest time. 

This giving of a hum'rous twist to serious mis- 
hap. 

Another gorgeous feather adds unto the jester's 
cap ; 

But when he marries, on the stage, in masquer- 
ade, a pair 

He's advertised to come and be a feature of the 
fair — 

What a comic Christian clergyman. 
One of the latest time! 

Not ours to doubt his honesty, since mean the 

right he may ; 
Yet in another manner, far, the Master walked 

his way ; 



The Comic Christian Clergyman, 153 

The high of soul, the meek of heart, the humble 

unto death, 
How different, in his solemn truth, was he of 
Nazareth 

From the comic Christian preacher, 
One of the latest time. 



When gather dark the clouds upon the spirit in 

despair. 
And thunders of the judgment roll around it 

evVywhere, 
For him that gave the scoffer's sneer the potency 

to kill. 
What if the dying hand should point — and e'en 

be pointing still — 

At a comic Christian clergyman, 
One of the latest time ! 



154 Studies in Stanzas, 



BALLOON BALLADS. 

As inflated by different illustrious types of poetic genius. 



BALLOON HIM OF THE REPUBLIC. 

BY J — LIA W — RD H — WE. 

You may call it "she," the aerostat that breasts 

the balmy blue, 
You may speak of " her " ascending till the earth 

is lost to view ; 
But the sex contemned as feminine has naught 

with it to do, 

Nor assists its soaring on. 

In the buoyancy of gases it may hover wide and 

far, 
With a row of bearded faces in its viriclusive 

car ; 
From its company of voyagers excluded women 

are, 

As the thing goes soaring on. 



Balloon Ballads, 155 

On the earth a jealous tyrant, so in airy currents 

high, 
It is man that layeth woman like a useless bauble 

by; 
Scarcely worth his worldly notice, shall he take 

her to the sky, 

When himself goes soaring on ? 

Then assign a proper gender to your bubble of 

the breeze, 
Let it be a virile he, or it, or anything you please, 
For 'tis not a she, by any means, that sails side- 
real seas, 

And for man goes soaring on. 



MOSE. 

BY BR — T H — RTE. 

Duffer's Bar, 187a. 
— Here ! another round jerk us, 

And trust me for paying — 

So, as I was saying. 
We went up from the circus ; 



156 Studies in Stanzas, 

Only us two, 
Me and my crew, 
A goggle-eyesing, pig-despising, 
Curly-headed Jew. 

Why, ballooning's no trouble ; 
When cut is your lashing, 
If nothing gets smashing, 
You go up like a bubble — 
Only, you see, 
'Twixt you and me. 
An extra poun' may bring you down a 
Little bit too free. 

And we had it that day, tob ! 
Ahead was the water. 
In which we'd be caught, or 
Must rise higher, and lay to. 
Still we sank on. 
Ballast all gone ; 
Without a hope to loop a rope to 
Aught the land upon. 



Balloon Ballads, I57 

" Well, let one of us perish 
For sake of the other — 
You've been like a brother — 
For my Hfe I'm don't-care-ish," 
Whispered so true, 
Moses, my crew ; 
" I'm bound to jump it, like or lump it, 
Overboard for you ! " 

I'd give five hundred dollars 
But just to put eye on 
(Excuse me for cryin') 
The dear chap that I allers 

Mourn for since then — 
Seen not again — 
As a dear departed, noble-hearted 
Miracle of men. 

What is that you are saying ? 
" Suppose he ain't dead, hey f 
But struck on his head, hey ? " 

With my feelings you're playing,— 



1 58 Studies in Stanzas. 

Do I see true ? 
Why — Mose — it's YOU ! — 
You goggle-eyesing, pig-despising, 
Curly-headed Jew! 



LAUS THETIS. 

BY ALG — RN-^N CH — RLES SW — NB — RNE. 

As on Sepia's shoreland the golden, 
Where the waters of Thessaly shine, 

Sprang Peleus, in the days that were olden, 
After azure-tressed Thetis divine ; 

As he strove in her flying to reach her, 

Whom by Zeus to his reaching was given ; 

As he followed the swift-footed creature 
Of heaven ; 

As he urged but his going the faster, 

When the nymph to a serpent transformed ; 

As his will was unswerving her master, 
When as fire or as torrent she stormed ; 



Balloon Ballads. 159 

As he mocked at her lioness-roaring, 

And still knew the beloved of Poseidon ; 
As his hell changed, by Cheiron's imploring, 

To Eden ; 



So the vessel that soars to the azure 

A cerulean Thetis pursues, 
Through the serpentine cloudy embrasure, 

With its chryselephantinous hues. 
Though the lightning and tempest, like devils, 

Should oppose, by their fury unriven, 
The balloon beats at last the blue levels 
Of heaven ! 



INFATUOSITY. 

BY TH — S C — R — YLE. 

At the tale of a flatulent sphere. 
In a flimsy contrivance of strings. 

They suppose to the planets they're near, 
On their gas-house-bituminous wings. 



i6o Studies in Stanzas, 

Never knowing which way they may go, 
Nor the moment in which they may drop ; 

To their asinine brothers below 
They're as ants on the peg of a top. 

It's as well that the race should be free 
From the idiots wasting its sup : 

And, since some won't go down, as we see, 
'Tis a blessing that some can go up. 

'Twixt the zanies of fame and of pelf 
I've become so disgusted of late, 

That I'd fain have the world to myself, 
With my Goethe and Frederick the Great. 



THE SAINTED DAMOSEL. 

BY D — NTE G — BRIEL R — S — ^TTI. 

It was a sainted damosel 

From heavenly casement leaned and prayed ; 
" The sun and stars below are well, 
And shines th' ethereal asphodel, 

And hovering angels chorus swell ; 
But I'm a lonely maid ! '* 



Balloon Ballads, 161 

The winds, enamored, heard the pray'r. 
That made her snowy bosom throb ; 

And, waving wild their arms of air, 

As she her own so soft and fair, 
Gave echoing answer of despair, 
In zeph'rous, soughing sob. 



A mortal, wandering round the moon, 
The dreary moaning overheard. 
And being in a large balloon, 
Much ballast he cast over soon, 
Till, fluttering like a dove in June, 
He rose to heavens third. 



" Why murmur, lovely saint ? " he cried, 
" In realms of radiant, endless bliss? " 

" Because I yearn for thee," she sighed ; 

" Oh, pause, young man, and here abide. 

I'm sorrowing for the world denied. 

And lonely am in this." 
6 



1 62 Studies in Stanzas. 

" I canncft stay, alas ! '* he ple'd, 
" The world you name, still claims my aid. 
Are no young men in heaven instead ? " 
" Ah, yes ; but they're so good ! " she said ; 
And piteous sighed, as on he sped, 
" Oh, Fm a lonely maid ! " 



Underwriteousness. 163 



UNDERWRITEOUSNESS. 

He rose with early day 
And sought the broad highway, 
His features fine effulgent with the good he 
meant to do ; 

By three score-years-and-ten 
An elder amongst men, 
This morning made his manful youth return as 
good as new. 



With one benignant roar 
He tripped from door to door, 
His sparkling spectacles agleam with pity's 
purest light : 

" Turn out ; and give your best 
pj To succor the distrest ! " 

And thundered at each threshold's verge with 
rude, resounding might. 



164 Studies in Stanzas, 

Up went the windows high, 
Between the earth and sky, 
While heads in rumpled rows came forth to 
answer the alarm ; 

And all were much surprised 
When they had recognized 
The good, gray-headed gentleman who'd broken 
slumber's charm. 



His form impatient swelled, 
As louder yet he yelled — 
" Lose not a minute more, my friends, but haste 
and give your aid ; 
A mighty city"^ swept 
By fire while you have slept, 
Craves quick compassion to repair the ruthless 
ruin made ! 



" One hundred thousand souls, 
Where flame in torrent rolls. 
Burned out of house and home and hope, must 
helped this moment be ; 

* Chicago, October, 1871. 



Underwriteousness, 1 65 

And bankrupt at the call 
Are underwriters all — 
Except the Non-Combustion Fire Insurance 
Company ! 

" Turn out with might and main, 
I beg of you again ; 
Nor lose a moment in the strife of sending succor 
straight ; 

For money, food and dress, 
In want and nakedness, 
Woe-wasted men all weary watch, and weeping 
women wait ! " 

They paused to hear no more, 
But flew to give their store — 
The rich the richer rivaling, the poor to proffer 
pence ; 
And surging to the street, 
With money, clothes and meat. 
Inquired the rightful railway routes to haste the 
harvest hence. 



1 66 Studies in Stanzas. 

The minds of high and low, 
Compassionate aglow, 
Thought only if the giver's gift would first of 
freight afford ; 

While ever, here and there. 
With urging voice and air, 
Besought that bustling gentleman large lending 
to the Lord, 

" You railroad men," he cried, 
" Expressmen, too, beside. 
And drivers divers, different, of costly coach, or 
cart, 

If you are Christian men. 
Give free conveyance, then. 
To bounty boundlessly bestowed by human hand 
and heart. 

" Heap high the great and small 
Free off' rings from us all ; 
For smallest succor sent with speed will warmest 
welcomed be. 



Underwriteousness, 167 

The underwriters best 
Are beggared with the rest — 
Except the Non-Combustion Fire Insurance 
Company ! " 

The people thus inspired, 
To nobler giving fired, 
On cart and carriage, truck and train, their pre- 
cious parcels piled ; 

While wondering as they ran, 
What blessed kind of man 
Was this who claimed complete control and went 
with waiting wild ? 

And yet he spurred them on. 
When train on train had gone. 
And called for contributions casting Croesus in 
the shade ; 

" But fifty thousand, you ! 
Who're richer than a Jew ? 
Why, Where's the wealth your wit has won in 
tributary trade? 



i68 



Studies in Stanzas, 



" A hundred thousand make 
Your charitable stake, 
Or find the furtive fiend of fire some day your 
debtor dread ! 

And you, who offer four 
Of thousands full a score — 
Vm 'shamed to shake the halting hand that heeds 
such haggling head ! 

" More money, yet, I say : 
Or there will come a day. 
When, should our sovVeign city, here, its own 
consuming see. 

Ourselves may lose our all — 
Except the risks that fall 
Upon the Non-Combustion Fire Insurance Com- 
pany ! " 



Then all the people cheered, 
As though there had appeared 
A saint supreme amongst them, driving each to 
duty due ; 



Underwriteousness, 169 

And followed him in ranks, 
From humblest shops to banks, 
To do the good that underwriters damaged 
didn't do. 

But when the day was o'er, 
And ceased the rush and roar. 
So charged with Christian charity and prodigal 
of pelf. 
The question did arise, 
'Mid more or less surprise, 
Who is this good old gentleman, and what gave 
he himself? 

It proved, in the event. 

That he was president 
Of that same Non-Combustion Fire Insurance he 
did laud : 

And as for what he gave, 

The uninsured to save — 
He hadn't given anything, the venerable fraud ! 



170 Studies in Stanzas » 



THE BOSTON MAN. 

November, 9, 1872. 

Slowly a Boston man 

Fried in his store, 
Where, seeking salvage, he'd 

Gained upper floor ; 
Singing, " A threnody 

Write for me now, 
Julia Ward — Julia Ward — 

Julia Ward Howe!" 

Came a fire company 

Under the sash. 
Rearing the ladders there. 

Quick as a flash : 
Crying, ' To rescue thee 

Norwich ascends ; 
Boston man, Boston man, 

Help bring thy friends ! " 



The Boston Man. i/^ 

Peered then the Boston man 

Down through the smoke, 
O'er where the ladder-end 

Casement had broke ; 
Asking with dignity — 

" Answer me true — 
Norwich men, Norwich men, 

What would ye do ? " 

Up spake a Norwich man. 

Poised on a rung, 
Breaking the sashes in, 

Red sparks among — 
" We, by thy city's light, 

Come to assist ; 
Boston man, Boston man. 

Give us thy fist ! " 

Back sprang the Boston man, 

Splendidly proud, 
Saying, while flames around 

Wove him a shroud : 



1/2 Studies in Stanzas, 

" Outside assistance is 
Of him the scorn, 

Gentlemen, gentlemen, 
Who's Boston-born!! "6 



Wildly the Norwich men 

Swarmed up, amain, 
Vainly to rescue him 

Seen not again ; 
And e'en a threnody 

Writes for him now 
Julia Ward — Julia Ward — 

JuHa Ward Howe! 



Chicken and Eggs are Out, 173 



CHICKEN AND EGGS ARE OUT. 

A FARM BALLAD OF THE PERIOD. 

Go, hide the coop, there, Betsey, and nail the 

hen-house stout ; 
We've city boarders comin', and chicken and 

egg's are out. 
Since Will M. Carleton made us the talk- so far 

and wide. 
There's been no end of town-folks for summer 

board applied./ 



The first one writin' to us, — that preacher, as he 

said, — 
About our little rampage and making-up had 

read ; 
Our story 'd touched his feelin's, and would we 

strive to take 
His fam'ly for the season, and some deduction 

make ? 



1/4 Studies in Stanzas, 

He only wanted quiet, and simply sun and air, 
With eggs and milk and chickens, and such-like 

country fare ; 
He wouldn't press for oysters ; but veg'tables 

and fruit. 
Could not be served too frequent, himself and 

wife to suit. 

For this he'd give three dollars, for each, all 

round, per week. 
And hoped our house was roomy — why, dang 

■ his 'tarnal cheek ! 
If I was worth a million, and twice as much he 

paid, 
1 wouldn't feed a stomach by preachin* empty 

made. 

The next one seekin' quarters was sick, he wrote, 

of style, 
And wished his dame and daughters to rusticate 

a while ; 
For, what with Saratoga, and Newport, in the 

past. 
He'd found his purse and patience were runnin' 

out too fast. 



Chicken and Eggs are Out, i75 

And, would we b'lieve, our story had moved 
them all to tears ; 

And had we first-floor bed-rooms, with bath- 
rooms in their rears ? 

They wouldn't ask for livin' in costly city way ; 

But milk and eggs and poultry, must have three 
times a day. 

The three young girls' dyspepsia would call for 
graham bread. 

And Madame took her coffee at early dawn in 
bed; 

And for himself at breakfast, he'd take a beef- 
steak rare. 

Nor think ten dollars, weekly, for all, much more 
than fair. 

It's one thing for a poet our honest hearts to 

praise, 
And another, keepin' boarders, that profit us no 

ways; 
I answered, quite sarcastic, ''Just call when 

you're about, 
And find, by knockin' vainly, that Betsey and I 

are out ! " 



17^ Studies in Stanzas. 

Then there was what-you-call-him, the scrawling 
writer chap, 

Who'd read the poem careful about our old mis- 
hap, 

And thought a woman wrote it, because she 
made the claim, 

And said that if she didn't, to cross her was a 
shame. 

" We can't go back on women," his self-same 

letter ran, 
At least 'twould be unworthy a literary man ; 
Our mother's sex we worship, or we should be 

but churls ; 
I hope you've got for neighbors some lively 

country girls. 

" My wife is at her mother's, and I am out at 

grass ; 
With a taste for new-churned butter, and cream, 

and rural lass. 
Just give me trout for breakfast, and then what 

else you please. 
And a little apple-brandy to wash down bread 

and cheese. 



Chicken and Eggs are Out. 177 

" I only ask for freedom to come and go at will, 

And the right of fishin' Sundays by the nearest 
water-mill ; 

And a dash of sage and onions with the canvas- 
duck at noon, 

And the use of team and wagon whenever there's 
a moon. 

" We authors don't reap fortunes, and so you'll 

make your charge 
Proportioned to my calling, and anything but 

large ; 
I'll pay you, on my honor, you needn't fear a 

bit- 
As soon as my book can compass a publisher for 

it." 

If I'd a gift of scribblin', so gUb as that and cool, 
I'd make a mountain of dollars by teachin' a 

writin' school. 
" If ever your brass," I wrote him, '' some folks 

should take for tin. 
Be certain, for ref'rence, always, that Betsey and 

I are in ! " 



i/S studies in Stanzas, 

No end of other letters I've had to answer, too, 
From people all over natur', with dollars a 

mighty few, 
And over the hill to the poor house we might as 

well repair. 
As deal with the city boarders who want but 

country fare. 

We've got one fam'ly comin', from southward, I 
suppose, 

Who never have heard about us in verse, nor 
yet in prose. 

They merely want, they told us, a breath of the 
new-mown hay, 

And the kind of dinner-table that we'd set any- 
way. 

Between the town-folks selfish, who think a farm 

is made 
Of eggs and chickens and dairy, for which no 

cash is paid, 
And them, more free and foolish, who never 

think a mite. 
But come, when they'd do better, at home, a 

precious sight — 



Chicken and Ejr^s are Out, 179 



We, farming kind, get riley, to find the breed so 

flat; 
And where's our human natur' if we made 

naught by that ? 
We give to the ones we welcome potatoes, pork 

and greens, 
With apple pie and doughnuts, and a spice of 

corn and beans. 

But as for milk and poultry, and things in skin 

and shell. 
We send them down to the city, for they were 

made to sell ; 
And if 'twas them they wanted, these folks who 

range and roam, 
They ought to know where to buy them, and 

that is in town, at home. 

So hide the coop, there, Betsey, and nail the hen- 
house stout ; 

We've city boarders comin', and chicken and 
eggs are out ; 



i8o Studies in Stanzas. 

And, what is still more pesky, to happen the self- 
same day, 

Our milk is all out, likewise — until they have 
gone away! 



The Trnckce Regatta, i8i 



. THE TRUCKEE REGATTA. 

This Students' Regatta is all very well 
For your Latin and Greek university swell ; 
And callow collegians of Newspaper Row 
May be ready to stand on their heads at the 
show. 

But people in general vote it a bore, 
If they haven't a brother, or son at the oar ; 
While 1, who have seen what a boatman can do, 
Do not care to take stock in a Sophomore crew. 

For what I call rowing, from shoulder to knee, 
There were none like the men of the roaring 

Truckee, 
Who made up a match in the year 'Fifty-nine, 
In the camp of the old Santa Barbara mine. 

The long rainy season at last had set in, 
With its floods from the hills, that came down 
with a din ; 



1 82 Studies in Stanzas. 

They settled the race at the Crystal saloon, 
Ln the time between deals of the game Vingt-et- 
un. 

'Twixt Mexican Dick and his partner in trade, 
And a Yank and his partners, the challenge was 

made. 
In dug-outs to paddle up stream in the rain. 
That a purse of ten ounces the winners might 

gain. 

The Yank and his men had been whalers down 

East ; 
For they came from New Bedford, or said so, at 

least ; 
And Mexican Dick and his party made boast 
They had served in a frigate along by the coast. 

No training or " coach" for such oarsmen as these, 
But a license to eat and to drink at their ease ; 
They'd muscles like giants, to lift or to pull. 
And were tough in a wrestle when empty or full. 

The day of the race was a sight to behold, 
And the river was snowy with foam as it rolled ; 



The Truckee Regatta, 183 

Yet down in their dugouts the gold-diggers sat, 
And were off like the wind, at the wave of a hat. 



You talk about rowing ! I shall not show how 
They were manned for their work at the stroke 

and the bow ; 
Nor pause to describe a particular burst, 
As, with struggle tremendous, each strove to be 

first. 

You need not be bothered to hear how they bent. 
And their ponderous boats through the element 

sent, 
Or how, for an instant, they'd stand in the air, 
In a manner like spiders, or trestle-work, there. 

The story is ended when one thing is read : 
Though the dugout of Yank made the finish 

ahead — 
" Not traversed the course," all the judges did 

say ; 
" She was out of the water two-thirds of the 

way I 



184 Shidies in Stanzas, 



BILLIARDS. 

BY A RETIRED AMATEUR. 

In the days when I Spotted the Ball, 

Where my meeting Miss Cue none should 
mock at, 

Many Runs did I make at the call 

Of her sire, who was great on the Pocket. 

Nothing less than a Count of three-score, 
If he'd had his own way, he'd have chosen ; 

And her cheek grew so chalk-like, I swore 
That the Red and the White, there, were 
frozen. 

All in vain had I Banked for the lead 

With a parent whose Draw beat me hollow ; 

Yet he made not a Point in his greed. 
That I didn't surpass with a Follow. 



Billiards, 185 

Till, at last, an unfortunate Break, 

For the fortune he'd lost made him mourner ; 
When a spout at three balls did I take 

To deliver him out of his corner. 

Then he gratefully gave me a Miss — 
Never barring a Push that was tinglish — 

And he said : " You may win by a Kiss ; 

But, be sure, don't put on too much Enghsh." 

Those were days when a shot off the Spot 
Was the end of all foul-playing wrangle ; 

And a Miss, made for safet}^ or not, 
Came with only a good honest Angle. 

They were times of more Phelan than these, 
When to Nurse on the Rail had been brassy ; 

And the French of a stroke that could please 
Wasn't what it is now — '' Lor ! a masse ! '* 



1 86 Studies in Stanzas* 



A STOOP TO CONQUER. 

My Reversible Stoop and Front-door Bell Dis- 
suader 
Is what I'd commend unto housekeepers all; 
Of your lives' daily pests the unfailing evader, 
And matchless for keeping them out of the 
hall. 
The top platform of stone, or of wood, has a pivot 

On either side, hid in adjustable sheath, 
And who clutches your street-bell, a ringing to 
give it. 
It quickly transfers to a chamber beneath. 

'Tis a beauty of this most benignant invention, 
That they who stand on it in manner polite, 
Would not ever find out its ingenious intention, 
'Till told, from door opened, to step in aright. 
Your connections and friends and respectable 
callers 
Don't tramp to your threshold as though 
'twere their own, 



A Stoop to Conq^ier, 1^7 

As do those whom my stoop is designed to make 
fallers, 
Because sure to tread the whole width of the 
stone. 

Here's the beggar that comes ev'ry day, spite of 
warning — 
That all you can give is for others than her ; 
She goes scuffling her brogans up each step this 
morning, 
And drops out of sight with a magical whir ! 
Then there follows a man with a patent clothes- 
wringer, 
Whose nails scratch the bell-pull as downward 
he shoots ; 
And a prater of Wheeler and Wilson, or Singer, 
Who sinks as he scrapes on your door-sill his 
boots. 

Then a beggar once more ; and a youth who's 
inquiring 
If this is a number he sees that it's not ; 
And a female book-agent, close converse desir- 
ing :— 
Each vanishes swift from the view like a shot. 



1 88 Studies in Stanzas. 

Comes a wand'rer reduced, with a wedding-ring 

solid, 

His precious late wife's, 'tis his anguish to sell ; 

With some tickets for church-fair a juvenile 

stolid ; 

A beggar again ; — down they flutter, pell-mell. 

Next, the person who asks : Where is Mr. Jinks 
living ? 
Quick followed by one with tape, needles to 
show ; . 
And a book-agent, bland, to rebuffs all forgiving ; 

A beggar ; and man wild to shovel off snow. 
One Avho'd ask but the gift of an old pair of 
trousers ; 
And one who'd inquire if you've tin-ware to 
mend ; 
A purveyor of pie -apples, called by him 
" rousers " — 
One after another they quickly descend. 

Then an old individual sucking his finger, 

To ask for the doctor, who's two doors 
beyond ; 



A Stoop to Conquer, 189 

And a tramp of the class that will stamp while 
they linger 
Till you with a spoon for their coffee respond ; 
A demoralized foreigner raising subscription 
To take him back home for his dear one's 
dehght ; 
And your hand-organ girl, who requires no de- 
scription ; 
A beggar or two — and they go out of sight. 

At your own certain hours, when 'tis filled to full 
measure, 
Examine the cage of detention you may, 
Picking out of the contents what suits your good 
pleasure, 
And throwing the worthless remainder away. 
Once a housekeeper looked on my stoop Avith 
such rapture. 
She left it all day to its saving of breath, 
And then found that the book-agents, four, of her 
capture, 
Had talked all the others completely to death. 



1 90 Studies in Stanzas, 

Were it not that occasional friends from the 
country 
Go down, from promiscuous scrapes of their 
feet, 
Fm not certain but, really, that Fd to be blunt, 
try, 
The book-agent system the Job to complete. 
As it is, that past slave to the ring, servant-maid, 
or, 
Whoever has 'tended your portal, will find 
My Reversible Stoop and Front-door Bell Dis- 
suader 
A blessing, indeed, and a boon to mankind. 



The Polished Legal Gentleman, 19 



THE POLISHED LEGAL GENTLEMAN. 

Your Chesterfields and Grandisons were, very 

probably, 
Examples to our ancestors of true gentility ; 
But how to do the courteous thing in courthest 

final way, 
Was left to be exempHfied in this, our later day, 
By a polished legal gentleman. 
One of the present time. 

We'll say a case has come to him, quite difficult, 

no doubt. 
Commanding all his skill profound to make its 

justice out ; 
proportioned to retaining fee, he sees at once its 

strength — 
Or vows that what it lacks therein shall be made 

up in length, — 

Like a polished legal gentleman, 
One of the present time* 



192 Studies in Stanzas, 

If witnesses upon the side his talents represent 
Are of a class repugnant to all decent sentiment, 
Or if in number they are weak, and, maybe, cir- 
cumspect, 
He'll foil their cross-examining by howling " I 
object ! " 

Like a polished legal gentleman, 
One of the present time. 

Upon the other side, perchance, is evidence com- 
plete, 
All technical perversion of the statutes to defeat ; 
And they are unimpeachable who come to 

testify ; 
He knows a trick to beat them yet — " without an 
aUbi "— 

Like a polished legal gentleman. 
One of the present time. 

Old Mr. Knickerbocker's form is seen upon the 

stand. 
Whose whole career shines spotless in the annals 

of the land ; 



The Polished Legal Gentleman. 193 

He tells what makes the plaintiff's cause look 

ominously dim — 
(Just wait till comes our counsel's turn to cross- 
examine him, 

Like a polished legal gentleman, 
One of the present time.) 



'' Your name is ' Knickerbocker ? ' Ah ! — ' from 

trade retired ' — I see ! 
Have you been ever sent unto the Pen-i-ten- 

tiary ? 
No blust'ring now » * * -5^ ' Object,' indeed ! I'll 

to the court defer, 
That it is competent to show his previous char- 

ac-ter," 

Roars a pohshed legal gentleman, 
One of the present time. 



'' I'll thrash you, sir !— I'll— I'll not stay to be in- 
sulted so ! " 

The venerable witness cries, indignantly aglow . 
7 



194 Studies hi Stanzas. 

*' What's that ? You cannot bulldoze ME, my man, 

as you will find ! " 
Replies the brave possessor of the true judicial 
mind, 
Like a polished legal gentleman, 
One of the present time. 

The court here interposes, to allay unseemly 

strife, 
" A question more outrageous I ne'er heard in all 

my Hfe ! " 
The blandest of all voices says : " Your honor. I 

submit ; 
That admonition leaves no choice, for me, but 

heeding it " — 

Like a polished legal gentleman. 
One of tfie present time. 

" Now, Mr. Knickerbocker, pray, your temper 

hot restrain. 
And we'll get on as pleasantly as good old friends 

again. 



The Polished Legal Gentleman, iQS 

You have a daughter, I beHeve, who's married, 

as they say ? " 
(The question he insinuates in quite a genial 
way, 

Like a poHshed legal gentleman, 
One of the present time.) 



" Well, sir, I have ; and what of that ? '* the wit- 
ness sharp replies. 

" Why, then, my man " (ferociously), " just drop 
all useless lies. 

And answer, on your oath, if she, ere to said 
marriage forced. 

Had not, by former husband, been somewhere 
out west, divorced ? " 
Yells a polished legal gentleman, 
One of the present time. 

If apoplexy ever choked in passion's mien, 'twas 

vv hen 
That clderlv, and eminent, and honored citizen, 



196 Studies in Stanzas. 

With cheeks empurpled by his wrath, and cuflF 

pushed back from wrist, 
Unable to get out a word, just shook a frantic 
fist 

At a polished legal gentleman, 
One of the present time! 

" What means such brutal violence ? " is counsel's 

shrill retort. 
"For its protection I appeal to this insulted 

court ! " 
And, skipping back a step or two, in innocent 

surprise, 
On judge and auditors, he rolls his deprecating 

eyes, 

Like a polished legal gentleman, 
One of the present time. 

" The case is closed ! " proclaims the bench. 

" No more we wish of this ; 
And for defendant we decide, who's done no 

thing amiss." 



The Polished Legal Gentleman, I9y 

Then speaks again that lawyer bland, of great 

a-bil-ity : 
" We bow, your honor, as we should, unto the 
court's decree — " 

Like a poHshed legal gentleman, 
One of the present time. 

" But, ere we part, I would withdraw whatever 

may reflect 
On Mr. Knickerbocker here, who has my high 

respect ; 
And what I've said implying that his daughter 

is disgraced, 
I move may, from the record, be immediately 

erased," 

Says a polished legal gentleman, 
One of the present time. 

Then shakes he hands with all who will ; nor 

seems a mite to care. 
That Mr. Knickerbocker but salutes him with a 

stare ; 



198 Studies in Stanzas, 

And whispering to his cHent glum, " It's take 

appeal we will ! " 
He hurries to his office to — make out his little 
bill, 

Like a polished legal gentleman, 
One of the present time. 



Squibs for ''The Fourth!' 199 



SQUIBS FOR " THE FOURTH" 

Little lack Horner 

Sat in a corner, 
The lock of his pistol to try ; 

Down the hammer did come, 

And it blew off his thumb ; 
Which accounts for his mother's " Oh, my ! " 

Ding, dong bell ! 

The house is blazing well. 
From the crackers Johnny threw upon the roof ; 

And from payment might be free. 

The insurance company, 
Could they give of Johnny's playfulness the 
proof. 

Druggist, druggist, have you any Hnt? 
Yes, sir, yes, sir ; serve you in a min't I 
Baby Jones's cannon went off before he thought. 
And just above the instep the ramrod has me 
caught. 



:^0Q Studies in Stanzas. 

Tom, Tim and Bobby were gentlemen wee, 
They laid in their beds till the clock struck 

three ; 
Then stole out oi doors with squib, powder, and 

gun, 
And the sick neighbor died at the rise of the 

sun. 

Sammy had a Derringer, 

Its barrel black as sloe, 

And when the Derringer went off. 

Did Sammy's hand, also. 

Little Bopeep has lost his sleep. 

Since gunpowder quite undermined him ; 
The matches got lit, in the pocket with it. 

And burned most intensely behind him. 

Rocket buy baby, for the housetop, 
Point at a stable, and then let it drop ; 
When the stick breaks the rocket will fall — 
Up burn the stable, the horses and all. 



Squibs for * ' T/ie Fmirth. " 2C i 

Say, Roman-candle ball, where are you going, 
That the frame cottage so close you illume ? 

I am a-going, says Roman-candle ball, 
Into that open, third-story back room. 

Sing a song of sixpence, the fourth day of July, 
A package of torpedoes, with one to hit your 

eye; 
When the lid is opened no pupil there is seen. 
And you will wear, until you die, a little shade of 

green 



?C2 Studies in Stanzas, 



THE THIRD TERMAGANT. 
1875. 

DOMESTIC DETAILS WITH POLITICAL PARALLELS. 

When Mr. Redde, the widower, at first came 

courting me, 
I'd no more thought of marrying than jumping 

in the sea. 
An honorable competence and place in life were 

mine. 
And I was happy in my lot, nor tempted to 

repine. 

But he must have a wife, they said, — and who so 

fit as I 
To keep his home in order trim, that all should 

satisfy ? 
Full many would no doubt be glad to gain so 

rich a prize. 
Yet none could be compared with me for favor 

in his eyes. 



The Third Termagant. 203 

In short, it seemed, society, with scarce dissent- 
ing voice, 

Would have me see my duty in consenting to its 
choice ; 

Until, at some self-sacrifice, I let them have their 
way, 

And to the union pledged myself — to honor and 
obey. 

I didn't undertake to be perfection, in the bond. 
Nor promise what at last might prove all human 

pow'r beyond ; 
But readily and cheerfully agreed to do my 

best. 
And leave the hand of Providence to work out 

all the rest. 

Not pausing here to dwell upon the private life 

we led — 
Which surely brought no grave mishap to him 

whom I had wed — 
I'll pass at once to what befell because I would 

not be 
The slave of this and that desire of mixed 

society. 



204 Studies in Stanzas. 

Because T chose, in quietness, to mind my own 

affairs, 
First one and then another dame thought I was 

taking airs ; 
From lip to lip the murmur grew, and since I'd 

not reply, 
Their gossip swelled to calumny, malevolent and 

high. 

My husband sickened presently and died ; and 

then 'twas said, 
I'd boldly planned to wed again before the man 

was dead ! 
A partner in his business they mentioned in their 

spleen, 
Like brother to poor Mr. Redde — 'tis Mr. Whyte 

I mean. 

You'd scarce believe the bitter things, revengeful 

and untrue. 
That many of my former friends remarked 

about us two ; 



The Third Termagant, 205 

How Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Reid, and Mrs. 

Horace White, 
And Mrs. Murat Halstead, too, reviled with all 

their might. 

Combining with my older foe, Miss Nancy Mar- 
ble called, 

They cried, " Another partner's doomed by her 
to be enthralled ! " 

Then clamored scandal ev'rywhere, and pitilessly 
made 

A poor old lady challenge me, in rivalry ar- 
rayed ! 

The persecution thus my fate could leave me 

naught to choose. 
And wooed indeed by Mr. Whyte, I did not him 

refuse. 
" You'll have the credit otherwise of wanting me 

in vain," 
FTe frankly said. I knew 'twas true — and so I 

wed again. 



2o6 Studies in Stanzas. 

There's nothing easier on earth for malice to 

achieve, 
Than talking into being that at which it feigns to 

grieve ; 
TJie busy meddlers I have named, by envy sheer 

and hate, 
Thus badgered me a second time into the mar- 
riage state. 

And being thus in bonds once more, I strove — 

am striving still — 
To do my duty honestly, with ready hand and 

will ; 
Not always free from some mistake — as who 

that's human is? — 
I'm loyal to my husband's rule, to serve the law 

that's his. 

But even while he's yet m life, without a word 
from me. 

Those women I have spoken ol have the auda- 
city — 



The Third Termagant. 207 

Old Mrs. Bowles, and Mrs. Reid, and Mrs. Ben- 
nett, too, 

To say Tve set my cap to catch a third one — 
Mr. Blugh ! 

The force of envious enmity can nardly further 

go; 

And all because I'll not descend to answer 

"Yes" or ''No!" 
Already I've by wiles entrapped two members 

of the firm, 
And must, of course, be scheming for a third 

connubial term ! 

It was not of my own free will I first a wife 

became ; 
They drove me to the second match to vindicate 

my name ; 
And now that Redde and Whyte I've been — the 

last, indeed, am yet — 
The final member of the firm they think I'd die 

to get. 



2o8 Studies in Stanzas. 

No thought have I of Mr. Blugh, as well they 

know. But should 
They goad me still, I may go mad, as any mortal 

would ; 
And in the end, if that's the case, their envy. 

spleen and cant, 
May make of me, despite myself, a rash Third 

Termagant. 



TJie Sleighing of Old, 209 



THE SLEIGHING OF OLD. 

You may boast as you please of your present 

Broadway, 
With its thunder of wheels through the whole 

winter's day ; 
Whence the snow, once the season's chief grace 

and dehght. 
Must be carted away, like some pestilent blight, 
That the carriage, the 'bus and the wagon of 

hire 
May go lumbering yet upon hub, spoke and 

tire, 
With no sight to the eye and no sound to the ear 
Of a change from the stoniest time of the year ; — 
But to one who remembers how diff'rent the 

scene 
When old Winter's white cloak its gay garment 

has been, 
It is only a skeleton, naked and cold. 
Of tne brilliant Broadway of the winters of old. 



2IO Studies hi Stanzas, 

Not so many years, either, have passed since 

the time 
When our Christmas came in to the silvery 

chime 
Of the bells that from thence should as jubilant 

ring 
To the steps of the steed till the coming of 

spring ; 
And the street of the city's imperial pride 
With the open highway of the countryman vied 
In its splendor of fleecy, prismatical white, 
Coming down, its bleak pave to transform, in a 

night. 
What a vandal were he who had breathed but 

the thought 
That to cart it away prosy aldermen ought ! 
Had he spoken the treason, by boyhood's disdain 
And a million of snowballs the man had been 

slain ! 
But as well might one think of dry-mopping the 

sea ; 
For the snows in those days were of polar degree, 



. The Sleighing of Old, 2 1 1 

And ere one had found thaw into trickle and 

drop. 
There was always another to settle on top. 

'Twas a bridal of joy for transfigured Broad- 
way, 
Thus bedraped, as it were, in a wedding array ; 
'Twas a signal for something prosaic in life, 
For its ploddings of care and its business strife, 
To give way for a time to the merrier side 
That a true human nature strives vainly to hide. 

And, as though they were not, passed the wheels 

with their roar, 
From the scene they had rendered unsightly 

before ; 
But to leave in their places bright flashes of steel, 
Ever following fast at the horse's quick heel, 
And a burden, or greater, or lesser, to bear. 
With no sound but the music of bells in the air. 

All New York went on runners — went wild on 

them, too ! 
From the thoroughbred's driver to him of the 

screw ; 



212 Studies in Stanzas. 

Not a carter so poor but his sled he possessed, 
Not a Croesus so rich that the rule be trans- 
gressed ; 
And the craft upon axletrees showing- that day, 
Was excluded in scorn from all-sleighing Broad- 
way. 

In your fanciful park, on your boulevards wide, 
You may think it genteelest of pleasures to ride. 
Having sent up your sleigh by express, to be 

there. 
When you ride up yourself in some wheeling 

affair ! 
But, not forty years since, the young buck in a 

sleigh 
Who had called it a ride without doing Broad- 
way, 
Would have passed for the veriest milksop alive, 
And been asked, how it was he was trusted to 
drive. 

Take a sleighride, in sooth, in New York, and 

not see 
Just how merry on runners by daylight 't could 

be? 



The Sleighing of Old. 213 

Take a sleighride by moonlight that was not 

begun 
By essaying Broadway's merry gauntlet to run — 
To be pelted with balls and be tooted by horn 
On the lofty stage-sleigh and by box-sledder 

borne ? 
Take a sleighride, indeed ! — Better frankly come 

down, 
And confess it a mere, stupid trip out of town. 

Not in all that your fast, fancy avenues show 
Of your shoddy and speed on a handful of snow, 
Is there anything rife with such good, honest 

glee. 
As a ride behind bells on the road used to be, 
When the cutter's keen edge threw out sparks 

in the cold. 
As it flew through Broadway in the sleighing of 

old. 



214 Studies in Stanzas, 



BEAUTY AND BOOTY. 

Tis of a fair damsel your troubadour sings, 
Whose pa was more rich than some old-fashioned 

kings ; 
A Murray Hill mansion the family owned, 
And all their belongings were very high-toned. 

Chorus. 

Deftly explaining the perfectly practicable process of reaching 
aristocratic circles without coming of old stock : — 

If money you've made in the fishmonger's line, 
Just go into stocks — of a railroad or mine ; 
And, should the said venture not make you 

repent, 
A new airy-stock-racy you'll represent. 

This damsel in question was stylishly bred. 
And dressed in the mode, from her heels to her 

head ; 
Yet ever she sighed, as she looked in the glass : 
'' I'm still only like other maidens, alas ! " 



Beauty and Booty. 215 

Chorus. 

Revealing, in strictest confidence, a delicate secret of the in- 
genuous girlish heart :— 

The young female nature is never resigned 
To being just like other things of its kind ; 
But craves some distinction all others above, 
If only by one button more on a glove. 

At length, as she pondered, a smile wreathed her 

lip- 

'' They are still wearing pockets far round on the 

hip; 
I'll have a sacque made on a plan of my own, 
With pocket placed somewhere along the back- 
bone ! " 

Chorus. 

Correcting a common mistake of some too careless masculine 
observers who are utterly unworthy of woman's true affec- 
tion : — 

There bachelors are who indulge the caprice, 
That damsels of fashion are all of a piece ; 



2i6 Studies in Stanzas, 

But let the fair creatures despise such attacks, 
While diff'rence they have in the cuts of their 
sacques, 

The article ordered came home ere she dined, 
And there was the pocket, exactly behind ; 
She dressed,, and put in it a pocket-book's wealth. 
Then started out-doors on a walk for her health. 

Chorus. 

Showing how an afternoon's airing, under these circumstances, 
conduces to the health of a maiden of the epoch: — 

If, gliding along on a much-crowded street. 
The ladies look back at one lady they meet. 
Be sure that the one whom thus each eye devours 
Feels, therefrom, the better for twenty-four 
hours. 

Our damsel so fair, with the pocket on spine. 

Exulted o'er all of her rivals to shine ; 

But when she was back, and the promenade 

done, 
She found that her pocket-book wealthy — was 

gone ! 



Beauty and Booty. 217 

Chorus. 

Digressing, for a moment, to a recent remarkable judicial ex- 
pression of opinion : — 

Judge Gildersleeve lately remarked, from the 

bench, 
He didn't design on the fashions to trench ; — 
But really, as some ladies' pockets are worn, 
He wondered more men were not pickpockets 

born. 

The anguish she felt for her money was sore, — 
Until her dear pa kindly gave her some more ; 
Then sought she a jeweler's, straight, with some 

bonds, 
And ordered a set of his best di-a-monds. 

Chorus. 

Doing but justice to a really deep and clever device of feminine 

judgment : — 

" If money in cash or in bonds," reasoned she, 
" So easily stolen, in daylight, may be. 
Much better it is to invest, I declare, 
In what, to make sure it is safe, you can wear." 



2i8 Studies i7i Stanzas. 

Once more on the avenue's pavement she walked, 
While crowds, in her wake, of her jewelry 

talked ; — 
An arm round her neck choked down even a 

cough, 
And then, with her diamonds, the scoundrel was 

off! 

Chorus. 

Frankly conceding that it is possible for such things to happen 
in a civilized country : — 

When thronged with all sorts of a great city's 

pop- 
ulation, a street's not as safe as a shop 
For showing a fortune in gems, and 'tis prob- 
Able that so doing may tempt men to rob. 

Our damsel so fair shortly after expired. 
Observing : " Of life I'm disgusted and tired ! " 
And all her dear friends said they thought it was 

plain. 
She'd died of a long-standing soft'ning of brain. 



Beauty and Booty, 219 

Chorus. 

In which the medical faculty, after scientific investigation, con- 
clude that—! ! !— ? ? ?— 

But when a post-mortem this story procured, 
The poor damsel's parents the doctors assured, 
They'd opened her skull, as a final resort. 
And found — no foundation for such a report ! 



NOTES. 



(221) 



Notes. 223 



NOTES. 



I — Page 44. 

O'er him bowed the king, and said : 
He is here— and he is dead ? 

In the realm of intellect it is sometimes given the masses and 
their viceroys to recognize and reward spontaneous individual 
excellence ; and yet theft" must be those great ones for whom 
the eye of majesty alone holds the recognition — coming not 
until the mortal changes into immortality. 



2 — Page 85. 

'Tis but when all the nation goes, 

Find leisure to be tliere he can, 
And never else— which merely show 

He's only an American. 

The local political insignificance of a mere American in New 
York, is undoubtedly attributable, measurably, to that once- 
respected citizen's too frequent abstinence from his duty at the 
polls, save upon occasions of exciting national importance. Thus 
the great mass of resident foreign statesmen find it incumbent 
upon them, almost exclusively, to select and elect legislators, 
mayors, aldermen, and other city officers ; and hence the nat- 
urall}- predominant flavor of hod and beer-glass in the man- 
ners of the average official representative of the Empire City. 



224 Studies in Stanzas, 



3 — Page 98 . 

llien upward winging through the ether, fleet, 
With arms enclasped, arose the shining Three ; 
But ever, fading, looking back to Thee, 

Thou Shade Eternal, bowing at the feet. 

Life at the purest leads bui tc a g/a /J at which some just ac- 
cusation, or reproach, might be spoken, and the noblest death 
that man can die must ever take some tender grace from the 
Fourth Spirit at the tomb — veiled Silence ! 



4 — Page ioi. 

Now joy to Barbarossa, 

Upon this April day, 
When German landsmen hold the lines 

Of Bow'ry and Broadway. 

The occupation of New York city by the Germans on the loth 
of April, 1871, was not only in celebration of the recent somewhat 
similar occupation of Paris by the victorious hosts of their good 
old Kaiser, but also in casual demonstration of their numerical 
equality, as voters, with the vast Hibernian throng which had 
taken summary possession of all the leading thoroughfares on 
the preceding St. Patrick's day. The ensuing bankruptcy of a 
person of no particular account, as related in the ballad, was 
a fitting reward for his disrespect in not observing the moment- 
ous occasion as a National holiday. 



5 — Page 107. 

So, let the rescued city say we fired without command and blund'red ; 
They take from Providence the word who fifty slay to save five 
hundred ! " 

At a critical moment in the "Orange procession " riot, in 
New York, on July 12th, 1871, the State militia, guarding the 
marching " Orangemen, ' became flurried by the ominousl)'- 



Notes, 225 

increasing aggression of the surrounding mob, and some of 
them fired (as was said) "without orders." The moment was 
that in which many thousands of the rioters, pressing fiercely 
upon the troops on either side, were just at that pitch of em- 
boldened ferocity when but a trifle might have precipitated their 
overwhelming onslaught ; and the timely volley bringing about 
fifty of them to the dust^whether delivered by official com- 
mand or not — certainly turned the scale of what might have be- 
come, in another instant, a terribly sanguinary and doubtful 
battle. 



6 — Page 172. 

Outside assistance is 

Of him the scorn. 
Gentlemen, gentlemen. 

Who's Boston-born 1 ! 

It was characteristic of the tremendously high spirit and in- 
eifable solidity of Boston, that, after the great fire in that city, 
on November 9th, 1872, when the local authorities proposed to 
receive contributions from other towns for the poorer sufTerers, 
there was much indignation at the idea amongst some of the 
citizens, who, by notes to the newspapers, protested that Boston 
was yet rich enough to take care of her own without " outside 
assistance ! " 



7 — Page 173. 

Since Will M. Carleton made us the talk so far and wide, 
There's been no end of town-folks for summer-board applied. 

When Mr. Carleton's earliest farm-ballad, " Betsy and I are 
Out," appeared obscurely in a provincial newspaper, it was the 
pleasant fortune of the present writer to transplant it promptly 
to appreciative metropolitan print, with such earnest com- 
mendatory notice as assuredly did not detract from its sub- 
sequent wide popularity. It was a happy thought to set the 
8 



226 Studies in Stanzas, 

practical sentiment of American farm-life to homely, yet 
dramatically-effective, verse, and this and the succeeding bal- 
lads of the series form a volume as characteristically and 
creditably American as any literary production of the time. 
Nevertheless, there is a side to agricultural character in the 
United States not much shown in Mr. Carleton's vigorous 
verse, and to this the legend of "Chicken and Eggs" is de- 
signed to do justice. Ingenuous as our native farmer may be 
in many of his ways, he is also capable of giving you countr)'^- 
board, selling you a horse, or conveying to you the fee simple 
of eligible supposititious railroad property in the West, with a 
degree of acute self-protection not readily to be reconciled with 
an Arcadian ideal of rustic simplicity. A brace of parodies 
upon Mr. Carleton's muse may illustrate this proposition : 

"BETSY AND I ARE OUT." 

Go 'tend the door, there, Bridget, and mind what you're about, 

For Betsy's mother's comin', and Betsy and I are out ; 

I've stood the dear old lady as long as ever I can, 

And the more I've tried to stan' it, the more I've had to stan'. 

Since first we two got married, and came down here to live. 
She's had no end of orders and free advice to give ; 
There's nothhi' a hand is put to, outside of the house or in, 
But she has a say about it that's always sure to win. 

Fi'om nursin' babies to cleanin', from hayin' to milkin' cows. 
We've give her her way entirely, as much as the law allows ; 
There's hardly a child or critter, a field, or a fence, or stone, 
She hasn't a fault to find with, or ever can leave alone. 

Perhaps I might stan' that much, if Betsy so should bid. 
And let the old lady boss it the same as she always did ; 
But now that her tongue has taken to waggin' another course, 
I've got to be up an' doin', or look for a cheap divorce. 

If I but say she's a-meddlin', she tells my wife I drink ; 
If ever I look at a woman, she gives my wife the wink ; 
And comin' from meetin', Sunday, when Betsy was taken ill, 
She said, that for half the symptoms, a woman could file a bill ! 



Notes. 227 



So, 'tend the door, there, Bridget, and keep your wits about, 
And tell the dear old lady that Betsy and I are out ; 
And then — in case she threatens to come some other day — 
Just add to the statement, Bridget, that out we intend to stay ? 



I 



"OUT OF THE OLD HOUSE, NANCY." 
Out of the old house, Nancy— movin' at last, you see. 
And up in the new one, yonder, shall settled quickly be ; 
But not for a good ten minutes the stage we take goes by, 
So there's no need for hurry, nor bein' quite so spry. 

The first day that we came here was that on which we wed. 
When many a one was livin' that now is cold and dead ; 
The very door we entered is green with the old paint still. 
And the same old chany-asters are growing by the sill. 

Up in the room that's whitewashed, we heard our Tom's first cry. 
And down in the room that's papered we saw our Mary die ; 
There ain't a thing in the homestead but's breathin' with our breath. 
There ain't a stairway in it but's long as life and death. 

There ain't a turn nor a corner but's holding for us still. 
What don't come out with the fixin's — what don't and never will ; 
We've cleared our duds to the leastmost, from carpet-tack to blind. 
But there's more than them there, Nancy, which we must leave behind. 

There's laughs for good old doin's, there's tears for troubles shared. 
That stay in the walls and floorin' the more that they are bared ; 
We can't take them off with us, however we may try. 
No more than the undertaker our spirits when we die. 

I thought that the p'int was settled, that here we'd always stay, 
Until that chap from Eastward came pryin' round this way, 
And said he thought of takin' a farm and a house out West, 
And asked my fi-ank opinion of what to buy was best. 

Seein' he had the money ; seein' he'd caught the tune 

Of makin' a Western fortin', as whistled by the Tribune^ 

I kind 'f let on. unconscious, that this was a place for sale, 

Which couldn't be bought for no price when railroads should prevail. 

And when he asked if a railroad was like " this way " to fork, 
I said that more than one would come in " this way " from New York ; 
For this from 'Yoi-k is west'ard, and what comes west from there 
Can't help but come out " this way " some distance, I could swear ! 



228 Studies in Stanzas. 



The way he snapt at the bargain, and closed it, after that. 
Was 'though I 'd offered a gold mine— it came so strong and pat. 
He gave me my own price for it, and seemed like all aflame 
To be th' old farm's possessor, in full, when the railroad came I 

Out of the old house, Nancy, we move to one that's new. 

To hold our heads with the great folks, once scomin' me an' you ; 

'Tis good to stick to the old place until you have the luck 

To sell to a down-east Yankee, who then, in turn, is " stuck I " 



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